LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATE8 OF AMERICA. 



1 



THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 



n^jiA->yJLl^^--^-c 'X'^jikJx^ , r/*-^-^-^>^'^-'"^ 



THE 



GEOEGICS OF YEEGIL 



S^ranslattb into ffinglisl^ Wn^t 



BY 

HARRIET WATERS PRESTON. 



i^ 




I APR 6 1881,: 

JAMES R. OSGOOD-Aijp: C0MPJS:NY. 

1881. 



^ 






Copyright, 1881, 
By Ja3ies R. Osgood and CompanYo 



All rights, reserved. 



University Press : 
John Wilson and Son, Cambredgb. 



PREFACE. 



I 




1 



CAN offer no apology for this attempt to render 
the Georgics of Vergil into English verse other 
than mj own great love of the poem, and the 
venturesome hope of heing able to impart a portion of 
the pleasure which it gives me to some few of the many 
who are unlikely to read it in the original. 

Of the best known of the Latin poets, the Georgics 
is the least known work : yet it is, in some respects, the 
most finished and symmetrical, and we have reason to 
believe that it came nearer than any other to satisfying 
the poet's own fastidious standard of excellence. It is 
also, or so it seems to me, the most characteristic of the 
man. We encounter his undisguised self upon almost 
every page : his ardor in patriotism, his loyalty in friend- 
ship, the immense capacity for gratitude which was in 
him, consistent with so true a dignity of spirit, his 
sympathy with the laboring poor, his extreme tenderness 
for the brute creation, his feeling for landscape, his love 
of home and of the country, the glimmer of humor, the 



Vlll PKEFACE. 

grace of modesty, the touch of melancholy, which invest 
his image with an undying charm. The very homeliness 
of Vergil's theme in this agricultural treatise favors the 
naturalness of his manner, the intimacy of his self-revela- . 
tion ; and, from this point of view, it seems a little sur- 
prising that the translation of the Georgics has been so 
much less frequently attempted than that of his other 
poems. The beautiful prose translation of Connington, 
and the metrical one of the gifted author of ** Lorna 
Doone," are the only modern English versions with 
which I am acquainted. 

To seek, with the sweet sound of YergiFs most perfect 
hexameters in one's ear, for a simple and genuinely Eng- 
lish verse ever so remotely suggestive of their musical 
effect, is a discouraging matter. Certain characteristics of 
such a verse, however, have long seemed to me predeter- 
mined and indispensable. It must have melody, and it 
must have variety. It must therefore be rhymed, yet 
not too regularly and monotonously rliymed ; it must 
have a freely movable caesura; it must be 'a verse in 
which a two or a three syllabled foot might be em- 
ployed almost indifferently. I did, in truth, listen for 
years to catch the echo of just such a verse. To say that 
the one which I finally adopted was, in all respects, satis- 
factory, would be to shame my own ideal. But it has 
some of the needful qualities. The iambus, which is its 



PREFACE. IX 

basis, may be frequently replaced by an anapest, without 
altering the pace of the measure, as the spondee of the 
hexameter may be replaced by a dactyl. By making 
successive rhymes follow alternate, while avoiding a 
division into stanzas or any other, save the paragraphs 
sanctioned by Vergil's best editors, I have hoped to miti- 
gate the monotonous effect upon the ear of pages of con- 
secutive rhyme ; while the fact that the proper names 
which Yergil introduces so abundantly (and even with a 
sort of predilection, enjoying, as it would seem, the mere 
exercise of subjecting them to his rhythm) have transferred 
themselves almost without effort to the English line, en- 
courages me to hope that the movement, at least of the 
latter, may be slightly akin to that of the matchless 
original. 

It is, perhaps, superfluous to add that, in the matter of 
rhymes, I have not strictly confined myself to those 
which are called perfect, which I think should rather be 
called major rhymes, but have sparingly introduced the 
imperfect or minor. All I can say is that in the case of 
a long rhymed poem, my own ear not only sanctions but 
demands a certain number of these minor rhymes. I 
have been reproved before now, for making this distinc- 
tion, by critics to whose judgment I am very much in- 
clined to defer ; and, after all, I make it, for, to me, it 
represents a fixed musical fact. 



X PREFACE. 

There is a graver objection which will certainly be 
nrged bj those, justly high in authority, against the am- 
bitious experiment upon one of the great works of the 
world here submitted to their scrutiny. My version of 
the Georgics is not very literal. It is not rendered lijie 
for line, or even foot for foot. I have sometimes inverted 
the order of clauses ; I have often expanded the expres- 
sion ; I have in one or two instances — no more, as the 
Latinist will readily believe — condensed it ; I have even, 
though very rarely, introduced an epithet, and, still more 
rarely, I have suppressed one. I say this not so much 
to forestall criticism, as to show that I have foreseen, and, 
in some sort, deliberately invited it ; and I can hardly 
explain why I have done so without saying a few words, 
though diffidently and reluctantly, on what it seems almost 
presumptuous to call my own theory of poetical transla- 
tion. 

I think, then, that while the approbation of exact 
scholars is the translator's highest reward, and indis- 
pensable to anything like content with his own work, it 
is nevertheless not his first duty to vindicate his own 
scholarship to them. Every metrical translator believes, 
and is bound to believe, that there are many among the 
learned who might vastly have bettered his own work, 
had they chosen to undertake it ; but he addresses that 
class only indirectly. His main business is with those 



PREFACE. XI 

who are not learned, to transmit to them something as 
like as may be to the impression which he himself has 
received from the original ; that impression being a com- 
plex whole which includes the sound and sense and 
spirit of the poem. And since it is not possible that this 
integral poetical impression should be precisely the same 
thing to any two readers, so it can never be that any one 
person will convey it precisely as any other would have 
done. In the matter of literal exactness, the two extremes 
are fairly represented by those two recent renderings of 
the Agamemnon of ^schylus, — Mr. Fitzgerald's and Mr. 
Browning's. I am neither poet enough to have dared fol- 
low the former, nor scholar enough to have presumed to 
imitate the latter. Moreover, I 'must confess that my 
heau-ideal of a poetical translation is nearly equidistant 
from the two. I believe it to approach much more nearly 
the simple ideal of some of the earlier English translators, 
— say Fairfax, in his excessively quaint, but beauti- 
ful and animated, version of Tasso, — corrected, indeed, 
by a somewhat more cultivated conscience about intro- 
ducing extraneous matter : or rather, I may say, cor- 
rected by the creation of such a conscience ; for one can 
hardly suppose that scruples of this nature existed in the 
mind of Fairfax at all, and they must still have been 
feeble in the mind of Dryden when he appended to Ver- 
gil's vivid picture of the cave-dwelling nations, in the 



Xii PREFACE. 

third book of the "Georgics," the remark, natural at the 
period, but not wholly relevant : — 

**Such are the cold Rhip?ean race, and such 
The savage Scythian, and unwarlike Dutch.'' 

For the rest, I have never wittingly swerved from the 
sense or tampered with the imagery of my revered author. 
That I have sometimes done so unwittingly is only too 
probable; and sins of ignorance or indolence committed 
within the scope of my own purpose, I shall be grate- 
ful, even though I may not be entirely glad, to see 
signalized. 

HARRIET WATERS PRESTON. 
Boston, February 1, 1881. 



BOOK I. 



THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 



BOOK I. 




WILL try, Maecenas, a song of rustic things : 
Of the growing of gladsome crops, and the 
favoring star 
For turning the sod and binding the wanderings 
Of the vine to the elm, and the care that oxen are, 
And the zeal of him who maketh his flock increase, 
And the lore of him who nurtures the thrifty bees. 
O ye most luminous powers, whom still the year 
Followeth in its march along the sky ! — 
lights of the world, Bacchus and Ceres dear, 
Through whom earth bringeth forth abundantly, 
Oaks of Chaonia yield to the corn and vine. 
And draughts of the Achelous are mixt with wine ! 
And ye, field-haunting Fauns, whose gifts I sing. 
Dance hither, Fauns ! dance hither, each Dryad maid, 



4 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book I. 

And help me ! — Help me also thou, King 

Neptune, whom once the smitten earth obeyed, 

And, gaping under the trident's mighty blow, 

Sent forth a furious horse from the depths below ! 

Dresser of groves, I will even call on thee 

Whose herds by the hundred, with hides all snowy-white. 

Browse the lush brakes of Ceos ! And favor me, 

Thou Shepherd Pan, by Msenalus, thy delight ! 

From lawns Lycaean, aye, from thy leafy home, 

Tegeaean, arise, arise and come ! 

May lady Minerva of the olive lend her 

Aid, and the young lord of the hooked plough. 

And old Silenus with uptorn cypress tender. 

And rural divinities all, attend me now. 

Who bring to the growing fruits unsown and new 

And shed on the sowing the largess of heaven's dew ! 

Thou too, Caesar, of whom we know not yet 

Where, in the halls divine, thy place shall be ; — 

Whether a city's guardian thou be set. 

Or one of the gods who shelter husbandry, 

And thee, the mighty circle of earth salute, 

As monarch of storms, and giver of all good fruit ; — 



Book I. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 

Or yet as deity of the unmeasured main 

Thou comest, binding thine own brows the while 

With the beech-myrtle of thy mother : — vain 

To other shrines the seaman to beguile, — 

Far Thule serves thee, and one of Tethys* daughters 

Brings thee, as bride, a dowry of all waters ; — 

Or else, mayhap, in the lagging months and burning, 

Thou springest, as a new star, to heaven's height, 

Just where the Virgin from the Scorpion turning 

Makes entry for thee : — the fierce claws disunite 

Before thee, and the grasping monster yields 

His unjust holding in the celestial fields ; — 

Whate'er thy lot, — for Tartarus may aspire 

To no such ruler, nor thou to that sad throne, 

Though Greece the Elysian glory so admire, 

'Nov hearkeneth Proserpine her mother's moan, — 

Make smooth my sailing, favor my bold essay, 

Pity the hind wnth me, assume thy way, 

Begin to hearken to mortals when they pray ! 



■I 



THE GEORGICS OF YERGIL. Book I. 

ITH the running of cold hill-streams in the early 
spring, 

And the crumbling of clods at the touch of the western air, 
Bid thou thy bullocks begin their laboring 
At the plough, and hail the flash of the cleansed share. 
Whose land hath twice felt sun and frost shall house 
Barn-bursting harvests in answer to his vows. 
But ere we cleave with the iron that unknown sea, 
Learn we of the winds, and the weather's changeful face, 
And what the ancestral haunts and habits be 
Of things that grow : — the loved of every place, 
And the rejected ; — for here springeth corn, 
And there, anon, the exuberant grape is born, 
And everywhere the unbidden green we find 
Of grass and tender saplings. Tmolus groweth 
Sweet saffron, — knowest thou not ? — and ivory, Ind ; 
The soft Sabaean his own frankincense knoweth, 
^ude Pontian men bring iron and the beaver strong, 
Epirus, palms, for the Elian mares of song. 
For still, upon chosen spots hath iN'ature lain 
Eigorous bonds and the yoke of a changeless law, 



Book I. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. \ 

Since ever Deucalion flung his stones amain 

Over the empty, early world, and saw 

Straightway the obdurate human race arise. 

Give, then, to the austere earth thy energies ; 

Bid thy stout oxen, while the year is new, 

Turn the fat soil and let it open lie. 

Till dusty Summer have baked it through and through 

With his ripe suns. Thou shalt use difi'erently 

Thy churlish land, nor toss it to the light 

Or ere Arctiirus rule the September night. 

So shall not weeds thy abundant harvest harm, 

Nor some slight moisture fail the sterile spot. 

But on the alternate seasons hold thine arm. 

And the field newly gathered assail thou not. 

Suffer it rather for so long to lie 

Fallow and thirsty, under the parching sky. 

Else, in due time, the yellow grain renew 

Where erst the pulse, with its gayly quivering pods. 

Or the rustling leafage of bitter lupine grew, 

Or tiny vetch, upborne upon fragile rods ; 

For oats and flax, they tell us, exhaust the ground, 

And poppies, in their Lethsean slumber drow^ned. 



8 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book I. 

Thus turning-about makes easy all thy toil ; 

Drench, then, with dung the desert, nor stay thy hand, 

But fling abroad, o'er all the out wearied soil, 

The grimy ash, — and lo ! the relieved land 

Bears newly, even as that thou hast not drest 

Thanks thee from out the fnlness of its rest. 

Oft, too, it boots to burn an unfruitful field 

Till the light stubble with crackling flame be spent ; 

Whereby, mayhappen, the turf is made to yield 

The hidden wealth of its utmost nutriment, 

All noxious damp is bidden to transpire, 

All vice expelled, by the purging of the fire. 

For whiles the burning opens the myriad ways, 

Mysterious pores, whereby the young plant is fed, 

And whiles indures the veins, their gaping stays, 

So the fine rains it nevermore shall dread, 

Nor ardor of sudden sunshine work it ill. 

Nor surly Boreas with his piercing chill. 



Book I. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 




E too shall gladden the land who breaketh up 
The slumbering glebe with rakes and harrows 
of osier, 

And ruddy Ceres, from the Olympian top, 
Cheer him who smites the furrow's long exposure 
Crosswise again, with plough reversed, and wields, 
With keen intent, the sceptre of the fields. 




UT pray to the gods, ye tillers of the ground, 
For weeping summers and winters fair and dry ! 
The dust of winter maketh the grain abound. 
And Mysia doth exult, and, throned on high, 
Gargarus is dazed at his own fruitfulness. 
And shall I praise his love and labor less 
Who ceaseth never, but hard upon the sowing 
Hath all his furrows level lain, howso 
They sterile be *? for the streamlets in their flowing 
He to his garden-plot beguiles : — and lo, 
From the grooved summit of the hill the wave 
Descends, the feverish, dying blades to save ! 



rO THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book I. 

And over the polished pebbles murmuring deep 

It comes, to heal with spray the scorched plain. 

Him, also, will I ever in honor keep, 

Who, lest the stalk sink under its weight of grain, 

Feeds down the luxuriant plants, when first they lift 

Their tender faces above the furrow's rift ; 

And likewise him, by bibulous channels draining 

The stagnant waters of the unwholesome fen, * 

When, in the season of doubtful sun and raining, 

A full flood goeth out, until the plain 

Be strewn all over with slime, and the young seeds rot 

In poisoned hollows, reeking with vapors hot. 




YEN" so heavy the cares of tillage be 

To man and beast, however versed in toil. 
And still behoves to hover incessantly 
About the crop, lest wanton geese despoil, 
Or cranes of Strymon, or unillumined shade, 
Or bitter succory the field invade. 
The father of humankind himself ordains 
The husbandman should tread no path of flowers, 



Book I. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 11 

But waken the sleeping land by sleepless pains. 

So pricketh he these indolent hearts of ours, 

Lest his realms be in hopeless torpor held. 

For ere Jove's day, no hind the land compelled, 

Nor might he stablish a landmark, nor divide 

His holding from his fellow's ; but all, as one, 

Wrought without question, and the earth satisfied 

Richly their needs. J^ow those old days are done ; 

Jove to the serpent his black poison gave, 

Eade the wolf prey, and lifted the angry wave, 

And he smote from the trees their honey-dew, and hid 

The fire in the rock, and the running rivers of wine 

Shut in strait channels. And all these things he did. 

That man himself, by pondering, might divine 

All mysteries, and, in due time, conceive 

The varying arts whereby we have leave to live ; — 

Seeking his food by the plough, his fire inviting 

Out of its rocky fastness. Also then 

It was the conscious rivers began delighting. 

In alder-craft they had grown, and sailor men 

Numbered the stars, and called them all by name, — 

The Pleads, the Hyads, and lights of the Bear aflame. 



12 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book I. 

And the ways were found to snare and lime the steps 
Of the wood's wild things, and to gird the glades with 

hounds, 
And to fling the casting-net in the river-deeps, 
And to drag the drenched lines from the sea's profounds. 
And to set in the wood the saw with steely edge. 
Where the men of yore had cloven it with the wedge. 
Other arts followed ; for, lo, unflinching toil. 
Backed by stern need, the world hath overcome. 
Ceres appointed the tillage of the soil 
When failed the acorns out of their leafy home, 
The holy arbutus vanished, and no more 
Dodona nourished the faithful, as before. 
Yet even upon the grain fell plagues erelong, 
Mildew defiled the stalks, and everywhere 
The barbed thistles gathered in lawless throng. 
Till villanous weeds displaced the harvest there 
Caltrops and cleavers, darnel, wild-oats forlorn. 
Darkened the gracious glistening of the corn. 
Wield, therefore, a tireless rake against thy foe ; 
Scare birds with din ; pay vows to Heaven for rain ; 
Shred thy plant's leafage, lest too dense it grow, 




Book I. THE GEOKGICS OF VERGIL. 13 

And dark, and thou consider, with longings vain, 
Thy neighbor's mighty gathering, and assuage, 
As in the forests of the primeval age. 
Under a shaken oak thy hunger's rage. 



E now the weapons, in order due, rehearst, 
Which, if he lack, the sturdiest husbandman 
Sows not nor gathers : the massy plough, the first, 
The Eleusinian mother's laboring van, 
Rollers and sledges meet for the threshing-floor. 
And the mattock's cruel weight ; and, furthermore. 
All the light wicker stuff by Celeus wrought, 
Hurdles of arbute, and, for the winnowing, 
lacchus' mystic fan. With long forethought 
These various tools do thou together bring. 
If that thou wouldest the country's life divine 
Worthily live, and call its honors thine. 
But earlier yet, even in the forest, thou 
Shalt choose a growing elm, and mightily bend 
Till thou have shaped a plough-beam for thy plough ; 
The eight-foot pole then fasten unto its end. 



14 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book I. 

The mould-boards twain set firm upon either side, 
Where the stout beam the share-head doth divide. 
And, sure, the linden light thou hast long since felled 
For the yoke ; and the lofty beech in its turn laid low 
For the handle ; so that, from behind impelled, 
Thy rustic chariot may freely come and go. 
For, hung in the searching smoke, this beechen wood 
Winneth a vigor hardly to be withstood. 



( ULL many a precept given by them of yore 

Might I deliver, would men but hear, nor scorn 
So trivial cares : and first, of a threshing-floor. 
Smooth shall it be, by heavy rollers worn, 
And skilfully wrought, and packed with Cretan clay 
That never a grass-blade through its chinks find way ; 
For the pests that mock thee are manifold. Small mice 
Build house and granary safely underground. 
Owls have their nooks, blind moles a couch devise, 
And earth's most villanous creatures most abound. 
The weevil swarms in the stacks, and the busy ant, 
Toilinpj and moiling against a winter of want. 




Book I. THE GEOEGICS OF VERGIL. 15 

Again : the forest search for the walnut-tree 

In the time of bursting leaves and odorous bloom : 

If many flowers have set, thou shalt verily see 

A marvellous threshing after the fierce heats come ; 

But, if the shadow of leaves alone be thrown, 

The fruit of thy threshing shall be chaff alone. 

There be who plant not till they have steeped their seeds 

In the olive's bitter juices, or in lye ; 

For so the yield of the dubious pulse exceeds. 

And cooks by a lesser fire. Yet seen have I 

The fruit of long and diligent labor lost. 

That which thou gatherest year by year bears most, 

But evermore, under a fixt decree. 

Waste all things and decline and backward glide. 

Even as a far-spent oarsman thou mayest see 

Holding his boat against an unfriendly tide 

Till the tense arm relax, and the current strong 

Hurrieth the unresisting bark along. 



16 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book I. 




E it ours to study, with intent as keen, 
Arcturus and the glittering Dragon, and 
The twin Kids' darkling weather, as ere hath been 
Theirs who through wild seas come to their own land. 
Face gales of Pontus, or attempt the strait 
Of purple-peopled Abydos, infatuate. 
When Libra sways the firmament, and hath made 
Equal our slumbering and our waking hours. 
Parting the world midway between light and shade, 
Ye men of the soil, expend your oxen's powers 
Putting in barley, till hard upon the time 
"When stubborn winter bringeth its rain and rime. 
And so of the flax and the poppy of Ceres' love : 
Drive the plough briskly, cover the grains with mould, 
While the land is dry, while the rains yet linger above. 
Thee too, lucern, the furrow that shall enfold 
Must fallow be, and crumbling to dust away ; 
While beans are sown ere the ending of the May. 
Thy millet be newly planted, year by year. 
At the season when the White Bull of the gilded horn 
Leads off the signs, and Sirius doth disappear, 



Book I. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 17 

Being, by a hostile star, of glory shorn. 

But if thou ask of the land its richer grains, 

And the bearded wheat alone reward thy pains, 

The daughters of Atlas ere the Dawn shall hide, 

And the Gnosian star of the burning crown decline, 

Or ever the furrow's claim be satisfied 

The seed to embrace, or undue haste of thine 

Trust the yearns hope to a soil unready yet. 

Many there be who will plant ere Maia set, 

But the so desired harvest mocks their want 

With hollow ears. Yet, haply, if thou dost deign 

The vetch or the humble kidney-bean to plant, 

Or the lentil of Pelusium, signal plain 

Setting Bootes doth in heaven display. 

Sow, then, until hoary winter's midmost day. 



here the cause wherefore the resplendent sun, 
Dividing the dominion of the sky, 
Through twelve great signs his high career doth run. 
The zones of heaven are five. Incessantly 
One gloweth ruddy under the torrid flame 



1 





18 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book L 

Of the flashing orb. On either side the same, 

Far to the uttermost left and right, extend 

Eealms darksome, with cerulean ice and rain. 

Yet the gods, willing poor mortals to befriend, 

Award them generously, midway these twain, 

Other twin regions which the sidelong march 

Of the mighty zodiac doth overarch. 

And this our world, that Scythia-ward doth rise, 

As though the dizzy Ehipaean peaks to climb, 

Falleth away to the South, where Afric lies. 

High over the North ascends one pole sublime ; 

But the Manes tread under foot the nether pole, 

And the inky Stygian waters over it roll ; 

And there the mighty Dragon of many coils 

Winding about, like a river of fire, doth seem 

To take the twin Bears in his terrible toils, — 

The Bears, who shrink with fear from the Ocean stream. 

But here, they say, there is darkness infinite, — 

'No change, no sound, but a rayless, timeless night. 

Or else, mayhappen, when fair Aurora saith 

Here her farewell, withdrawing the daylight thus. 

She seeks those realms. But when the earliest breath 



Book I. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 19 

Of the Orient's quivering steeds moves over us 

Once more, — then Vesper, star of the rosy face, 

Beameth her last on that mysterious place. 

So is it that we seek our weather lore 

In a fitful sky, seed-time and harvest learn. 

And when on treacherous deeps to ply the oar. 

When launch the full-rigged craft, when timely turn 

Forest ward for the felling of the pine. 

Not vainly, then, the year's fourfold design 

We ponder, nor the star's rising, nor its decline. 




UT if cold rains imprison the churl forsooth, 
Then is the time each indoor task to speed 
Against brightening weather ; then the plough's blunted 

tooth 
Is sharpened ; and for the vineyard's day of need 
Hollowed are trees for troughs, and branded plain 
Are the cattle, and numbered all the sacks of grain. 
There are forked props to be cut the vines to bear, 
And Amerian willow ties for the tender sprays, 
And bramble twigs to be wrought into wicker-ware, 



20 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book I. 

And corn to be roasted and ground on these dull days ; 
For the laws of the gods and men alike allow 
Even upon holy days these tasks, I trow. 
Due reverence ne'er forbade thee drain thy field, 
Fence crop, snare birds, nor kindle the brier, 't is clear, 
Nor the bleating flock to the healthful stream to yield. 
With apples and oil, no less the muleteer 
May saddle his plodding beast, and bid depart. 
Black pitch to bring and millstones from the mart. 



^Mp ITH varying influence over tasks like these 

l^l^llili^ Hath Luna each her following days endued. 

Shun aye the fifth ; for then the Eumenides 

Were born, and pallid Orcus, and Earth's fell brood, 

Coeus and Japetus and Typhoeus dire 

(Brethren who dared against high heaven conspire ; 

For thrice huge Ossa did they essay to lift 

On Pelion, and leafy Olympus on the twain ; 

But thrice the Father, launching his lightning swift. 

Levelled the pile). On the seventeenth morn again 

Thy vines are set, thy bullock shall broken be, 



Book I. THE GEOKGICS OF VERGIL. 21 

And the leashes put to thy warp ; but the ninth shall see 
Thy runaway thief o'erta'en and thy slave go free. 




HEEE be many labors meet for the cool night 
season, 

Or the dewy hours while yet the morn is new. 
Then is light stubble reapt, and with equal reason 
Sere meadow lands ; for never doth healing dew 
Quite fail the darkness. And one man well I know 
Who tarrieth late by his winter fireside^s glow, 
Feathering the wooden torch with dexterous knife ; 
"While singing, singing to lighten her long toil, 
Plieth her comb at the web, the busy wife. 
Or setteth her sweet must over the flame to boil. 
Skimming the liquor with the vine's gathered leaves, 
What time the very brazen vessel heaves. 
But in high summer is reapt the yellow wheat. 
And in high summer is thresht the ripened corn. 
If, therefore, he plough or sow, it still is meet 
The laborer strive unclad ; and lo, his turn 
For resting and feasting comes in winter weather, 



22 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book I. 

When tlie crops are housed, and the hinds make merry 

together. 
Oh, dear the season that bringeth surcease of care, 
As the port to the mariner when his craft opprest 
Cometh safe home, and the seamen jovial are. 
And all the prow is with blooming garlands drest ! 
But still must the oak be shorn, and the olive gray 
And berries of sanguine myrtle stored, and bay. 
Likewise is now the season of the year 
Snares for the crane and nets for the stag to fling, 
To hunt the tremulous hare, and smite the deer 
With hempen coils of the Balearic sling 
Warily cast, while the snow-fall heavy lies, 
And the river-channel toileth in gathering ice. 



1 




UT how of the autumn stars and storms to sing. 
Or all the sleepless vigilance owed of men 
When the great heats pass, and the days are shortening? 
Or how of the deluge-laden spring-tide, when 
Upon tender stalks milk-full, and ears that sway 
Light in the acre, falleth a swift dismay ? 



Book I. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 23 

Yea, I have seen, when harvest days are early, 
And the first reapers^ the golden fields among, 
Shredding from slender stems the ripened barley, 
Shock as of all the winds together flung 
In battle. Then the very stalks, uptorn 
By the furious hurricane, aloft are borne, 
And whirled into the blackness of the storm 
The culms and the winged stubble. Or yet again 
Far over the deep the clouds their squadrons form, 
And the mighty mass rolls inland, foul with rain ; 
And, like a foe, the flood bursts out of the sky. 
And the very aether topples from on high. 
Lost now the happy labor of man and beast ! 
Nor seed nor furrow resists the whelming wave ! 
The dikes are full, and the running streams increast 
Till they roar again, and panteth each ocean cave 
And inlet, and, by night, the vivid lance 
Of the lightning in the Father's hand doth glance. 
Earth shakes as the bolt descends, wild creatures flee. 
And slavish fear strikes into the heart of man ; 
But he, with his flaming sword, smites Ehodope 
Or Athos, or the Acroceraunian 



24 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book I. 

Peaks, while the rushing rainfall thicks the sky, 

And the wood sighs loud in the gale, and the sea-sands cry. 

Meet is it, therefore, thou consider with awe 

The lights and laws of the firmament ; so discern 

The depths where shivering Saturn doth withdraw, 

The orhit where the fires of Mercury burn. 

But venerate first the gods, and most of all 

Great Ceres on her annual festival. 

In the clear season when the herbs are springing, 

And winter passeth away, and is no more, 

Be ready betimes, thy pious offering bringing. 

For the lambs are fat, and mellow the wines in store. 

And slumbers upon the densely wooded hill 

Are sweet. Then let the rustic youth fulfil 

The Ambarvalia. Milk and honey and wine 

Be poured, and thrice the blessed victim round 

The ripening field, while jovial dancers join 

His train, and summon, with clamor of sweet sound, 

Ceres into their homes. Ay, let men stay 

The sickle, while, oak-chapleted, they pray, 

And lift to the Mother many an untaught lay. 



Book I. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 25 




UT the Father, he hath appointed manifold 
And faithful signs of torrents alike and dearth. 
So that we know what winds compel the cold* 
And the moon's monthly message unto the earth, 
And the tokens of sinking gales, and the warnings all 
Which bid the husbandman shelter his flock in stall. 
For when great winds are gathering, forevermore 
The breast of ocean heaveth distressfully, 
Dry shrieks are heard in the mountains, and from the shore 
The inarticulate waves make hoarse reply, 
And mightily swells the murmur of the trees. 
Oh ! barely then the keel shall escape the seas, 
When the fast gull cometh in from the outer deep, 
Making the shore with a warning note and harsh. 
When high and dry on the sand the cormorants leap. 
And the heron spurns his haunt in the lonely marsh, 
And overtops the very clouds in his flight. 
Also, when wind is coming, behold at night 
How many the meteors, and how they glide 
Swiftly adown the declivity of the dark ! 
And the trains of whitening fire they leave, how wide, 



26 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book I. 

How long ! l^or wilt thou fail, by times, to mark 

How chaff and the dropping leaf are whirled amain, 

And flocks of thistle-do wii skim the watery plain. 

Then shines the lightning out of the angry ^N'orth, 

And the houses of Eurus and Zephyrus shake to the roar 

Of the thunder ; and while the wealth of the field goes forth 

On the swollen dikes, away from the friendly shore 

The mariner gathers in his rain-drenched sails. 

Ah, never unheralded come the rainy gales ! 

The soaring crane drops into the valley low ; 

'Ware of their rising, the bullock snuffs the air 

With nostrils wide ; and hurriedly to and fro 

About the lakes the twittering swallows fare ; 

While the garrulous frogs, away in the miry fen, . 

Deliver their old complaining note again ; 

Also the ant, incessantly travelling 

The same strait way with the eggs of her hidden store ; 

The rainbow quenching its thirst ; and loud on the wing, 

Spurning the pastures whereon they fed before, 

A mighty army of crows, all tell of storm. 

So do sea-birds, various in name and form, 

And they the Asian meadow that explore, 



Book L THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL, 27 

In the sweet shallows of the Cayster diving, 

When showers of spray from their shaken wings they pour, 

Or, smitten anew, by zest of wanton striving 

Head-foremost seek the wave, and plunge therein 

In the gay feint their plumage to make clean. 

E'en the grim raven, albeit alone he treads 

Waste and dry places, for the storm doth hark 

And loudly hail. And it is foreknown of maids 

Carding their flax when all without is dark, 

And the lamp burns dim for the fungus gathering thick, 

And the oil that sputters about the floating wick. 



UT when the rain is over and gone, appear 
To the foreseeing eye signs no less true 
Of Empyrean calms, and of sunshine clear. 
The hosts of the uttermost stars come out to view ; 
No fleece trails over the heaven ; and the rising moon 
Sheddeth a light beyond her brother's boon. 
The halcyons loved of Thetis fold their wings 
On the warm sands ; the beast of the filthy sty 
His mumbled fodder no more at random flings ; 




28 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book I. 

Mists cling to the meadows ; and from the roof-tree high, 

After sunsetting, we hear the bird of night 

Tell o'er and o'er the tale of her vain despite. 

Anon behold aloft in the limpid air 

The sea-hawk Msiis, and Scylla shall expiate 

The rape of that fatal tress of purple hair. 

Whithersoever she flies, he, fierce with hate. 

Clamoring follows, and looseth not his prey. 

Whithersoever they take their airy way. 

List also the rooks in their leafy homes on high, — 

Glad creatures these, — aye singing under their breath 

With burden of soft sighs. I know not why. 

But deem a joy unwonted gendereth 

Such hubbub, for that now they see again 

Their nests and their young in the sweet light after rain. 

Not theirs the wisdom of our humanity 

Divinely lent, nor more mysterious lore : 

They follow the changeful temper of the sky. 

If the wet South clear, if the rare deeps dim once more, 

Their mood is changed, as a wind-blown vapor's way. 

Therefore the fields are vocal, hence the play 

Of the happy flocks, and the rooks' exultant lay. 



Book I. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 29 




UT wouldest thou feel no treachery at all 

In midnight calms, no doubt of the hour at hand, 
Look narrowly unto the swift processional 
Of following suns and moons, and understand. 
When Luna rallieth first her scattered sheen, 
If theTound be dark her misty horns between, 
There are floods to fall on the fields of earth and sea ; 
But if her face be bright with a virgin glow. 
Beware of the coming gale. For, verily. 
Fair Phoebe glows in the wind : it hath aye been so. 
Her risings, also, thou shalt enumerate ; 
And on the fourth, which governeth all her fate, 
If over the heaven a radiant crescent float. 
Through the long morrow, and for days many more. 
Even to the month's end, are tempests quite forgot ; 
And grateful mariners all along the shore 
Pay votive rites to Glaucus and Panopea 
And to Melicertes, child of Leucothea. 
The witness of the day-star next receive, 
Rising, or setting in the wave. The tale 
Sun-told at dawning, and rehearst at eve 



30 THE GEOKGICS OF VEKGIL. Book I. 

To the climbing constellatioris, shall not fail. 

Shows he a hollow morning face, withdrawn 

In maculate vapors 1 Lo, an ominous dawn, 

And a wind coming out of the South with peril fraught 

For cattle and crops and trees. 'Nov less the dread 

When the lucid rising rays in clouds are caught. 

Broken and quenched, and from the saffron bed 

Of her Tithonus Aurora cometh pale. 

Then rings the roof to the bound of the ruthless hail, 

And ill shall the tender vine-bough shelter then 

The growing grape. Yet of the westering sun 

Eegard the changeful colors with keener ken, 

Forecasting a deluge when his brow is dun. 

Gales when it glows ; while flecks of dark on the fire 

Bespeak a strife wherein wind and cloud conspire. 

On no such even will I my cable loose, 

Or venture me on the deep. But if, perchance, 

When So], returning, the vanisht day renews. 

If stainless all his glorious countenance. 

Heed not light clouds, but watch with a tranquil mind 

The waving of forest leaves in the shrill north wind. 

And, verily, of the great orb thou mayest invite 



Book I. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 31 

Yet deeper intimations ; bid him tell 

The innermost secrets of the d usky night, 

The humid hush of the brooding storm dispel, 

And open the storehouses where peaceful skies 

Await fair winds. Who dares his word despise ? 

Hath he not many a time, by signs, foretold 

The instant perils of the unconscious state. 

Blind heavings of rebellions manifold 1 

Did he not, pitying Eome for Caesar's fate. 

Shroud his bright head in black, till impious men 

Trembled lest primal night were come again 1 

Ay, but then too the earth and the ocean spake, 

And dogs abhorred, and birds of evil tongue ; 

And we beheld the fields of the Cyclops quake. 

And billows of molten rock and fire-balls flung 

From Etna's riven furnaces ; while, afar. 

All Germany heard aghast the din of war ; 

And shudderings, as of unimagined fear. 

Passed over the Alps ; while in sacred groves, long dumb, 

A terrible cry arose for men to hear ; 

And pallid spectres out of the night did come 

Fearfully ; cattle spake unto men afraid ; 



32 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book L 

The earth was rent ; the streams, in their course, were stayed; 

And the gods of bronze and ivory, in the fanes, 

Did weep and sweat for anguish. One dread day 

Eoyal Eridanus dekiged all the plains. 

Tearing the trees from dizzying heights away, 

Swamping the beast in the stall. And evermore 

Threads of ill-omen strayed the entrails o'er, 

And stately cities did echo all the night 

To the howling of wolves. never, verily, 

Fell thunderbolts out of air so calm and bright, 

Such comets blazed along the alarmed sky. 

Till the hour came when, on Philippi's plain, 

Komans with Eomans measured spears again. 

Aye : twice unstayed of pitiful Providence 

Tlie Balkan sIo^dcs, the Emathian prairies, ran 

Crimson with gore of ours. long, long hence, 

In those far marches, shall the laboring man 

Upturn the rusted javelin with his share. 

Smite with his fork the empty helm, or bare 

With awe the bones of the mighty to the air. 



Book I. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 33 




ODS of the soil, my father's gods and mine, 
And Romuhis, and mother Vesta, who defend 
The Tuscan Tiber and castled Palatine, 
Suffer our young hero succor still to lend 
To this distracted century. Long ago 
Blood of our blood atoned with ample flow 
The broken oaths of Laomedontian Troy. 
But long, Caesar, hath heaven grudged us thee ; 
For human victories minister annoy 
To minds celestial : wherefore it is we see 
Chaos of right and wrong, and terrible throes 
Of strife abroad, and infinite crimes and woes. 
The plough receiveth no more its honor due ; 
The fields are waste ; their tillers are all afar; 
The curved sickle is ta'en and shaped anew 
Into a pitiless brand. Rumors of war 
Have suddenly iu all the earth increast : 
At once from Germany and the utmost east 
Of the Euphrates the}'' arise ; to-day 
Even sister towns the bonds of peace despise ; 
And impious Mars holds universal sway. 



34 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book I. 

And the world is like a charioteer who flies 
Forth of the stalls into the course, with vain 
Intent his violent horses to restrain ; 
They have their will ; the car recks not the rein. 



BOOK IT. 



BOOK 11. 




N'OUGH of watching the stars and tilhng the field 1 
To thee, Bacclius, my strain I now address ; 
I will sing, too, of the olive's tardy yield, 
And all the young offspring of the wilderness. 
Come to me, father of the wine-press, — here 
Where the land is overflowing with thy cheer ! 
Come to the autumnal fields, where vines are weighed 
Earthward with thy rich honors, and vats a-foam 
And brimming with the vintage newly made, — 
jubilant father of the wine-press, come ! 
And lend thine aid and fling thy buskins by 
What time in the must our naked feet we dye ! 




UT, first, of the generation of all trees : 
Innumerable the modes of Xature here ; 
For some possess, unbidden of men's decrees, 
Their rural haunts, and follow at will the clear 



38 THE GEOHGICS OF VEKGIL. Book II. 

Meanderings of the waters. And such be 

Slim osiers, flexile broom, and the poplar-tree, 

And the gray willows that whiten in the wind. 

So too, from the springing of a seed, self-sown, 

Tall chestnuts, and the bay-oak, — of its kind 

Leafiest in Jove's dominions, — and that one 

That dwelleth beside the oracles of Greece. 

Otherwise yet, the plums and the cherry-trees 

Assemble closely about the parent stem 

Their lusty suckers. The very Parnassian bay 

Loves the great mother-shade, while young, like them. 

Such and so variable is ]N"ature's way. 

Thus fruit-trees grow, and they of the wild green woods 

And the shades of consecrated solitudes. 




UT man hath wonderful modes of increase found 
Of his good wit. From the fond parent tree 
He severs and sets in furrows of the ground 
The juvenile plants ; and bedded slips hath he. 
Some cloven in transverse wise, and some acute. 
The forest-denizen, seeing at his foot 



Book IL THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 39 

The layer's lowly arch, hath prescience clear 
Of others fed upon his own life and soil. 
Some flourish even rootless ; for we hear 
Of venturous gardeners, who, in faith, despoil 
The tree of its topmost spray to hide in earth. 
Nay, there are tales of yet more marvellous birth : 
There issueth from the dry, sawn olive-w^ood 
Ofttimes a living rootlet, and we are ware 
Of separate boughs, in harmless wise, endued 
With alien fruitage ; so the engrafted pear 
Hath ripened apples, and the empurpled plum 
Beside the stony cornel found a home. 



AEK then, ye husbandmen, the curious thought 
Each several plant, after its own kind, doth ask. 
Tame the wdld fruit by tendance, and suffer not 
Your fields to rest. Oh, ever-glorious task, 
TaburnuS' vast, in olive robes, to drape 
And set the slopes of Ismarus with the grape ! 
And thou, Maecenas, our glory and our pride. 
Our most renowned, and worthiest so to be, 




40 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book II. 

Make thou the voyage I have ventured by my side ! 
Let us loosen sail ! Let us fly to the open sea ! 
Yet is not mine the daring that would essay 
To compass the universe in my numbers ; nay, 
iN^ot were my tongues an hundred, and my voice 
An hundred fold uplifted, — a brazen roar ; 
Come, therefore, friend, for the country of our choice 
Lies hard at hand, and soon may we touch the shore ; 
And I summon thee now to list no mythic strain, 
Preludings weary, and wanderings wide and vain ! 



HE plants that seek unbidden the shores of light, 
However strong of limb, and of leafage fair. 
Bring not forth of their kind. Yet Nature's might 
Doth only sleep in the soil, and if with care 
They grafted be, and in artful farrows set, 
The mood of their savagery they quite forget, 
And the lesson given of man right aptly learn. • 
Ay, even the sterile root-stalk, borne away 
And set in the open, increase doth return. 
But they that under the shadowing limbs delay 




Book II. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 41 

Of the great mother reft of their young shall be, 

And withered in all their fair fertility. 

But slow is the life of the seed-sown tree, and late 

In the long to-be shall men sit under its shade, 

And fruits, forgetting their sap, degenerate. 

And birds on the grapes of the wilding vine have preyed ; 

And he must labor and spend, Avho would impose 

Laws of the farrow on each green thing that grows ! 

Layers of the vine, truncheons of olive-wood, 

And stalks of the Paphian myrtle, shall reward 

In kindliest wase thy care ; while it is good 

To slip the spreading ash and the hazel hard, 

And them of the mighty crown of shade, — the trees 

Consecrate evermore to Hercules. 

Nor elsewise doth the aerial palm ascend, 

Xor Jove's Chaonian oaks, nor firs that see 

Visions of drowning seamen. Eut thou shalt lend 

Grafts of rude arbute unto the walnut-tree, 

Shalt bid the unfruitful plane sound apples bear, 

Chestnuts the beech, the ash blow white with the pear, 

And, under the elm, the sow on acorns fare. 




42 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book II. 

ET know that grafting and budding are not one. 
The eye first rendeth away its tenuous vest, 
Pushing beneath the bark. And this being done, 
Close thou, in a narrow groove therein depressed, 
The germ of the alien plant, and bid it find 
Life in the sap that circles throughout the rind. 
But fair, with never a knot, the stem shall be 
Thou rivest deep with wedges, to set therein 
Slips of a more prolific ancestry, 
The which, erelong, shall high in the aether win 
With lusty shoots, until the old trunk have known 
Marvel of new leaves, and fruitage not its own. 
Also, the manifold kinds of willows note, 
And them of the lotus and the elm-tree brave ; 
Nor be the Idsean cypresses forgot ; 
j^oY all the shapes that unctuous olives have, — 
Some oval, and some as bitter berries round. 
And some like acorns. And divers kinds are found 
Of apples, and all Alcinoiis' orchard growth ; 
Nor do the Syrian and the Crustumian pear 
Derive their fruit from the same scions, both; 



Book IL THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 43 

Xor the huge hand-fillers. And our trees upbear 

Grapes of another vintage on their vines 

Than Lesbia plucks from Methymneean bines. 

The soils are sterile Thasia's vine that breed, 

While the pearly grapes of Mareotis love 

A wealthier dwelling. Psithia brews indeed 

A wine from the o'er-ripe fruit ; while they who prove 

The vintage of Lagos, howso light it be, 

Reel in their gait, and stammer in slavery. 

Costliest of all, the crimson liquors still ; 

And, Rhsetic, what of thee ? Dare never to vie 

With treasures the Falernian vaults that fill ; 

Nor yet shall the wines of Tmolus issue try, 

Nor even the royal growth of Phanse's cape. 

With juice of the hardy Aminaean grape ; * 

Nor any nor all of these, for bounteous flow 

And that fine virtue that outlasteth years. 

With the lesser Argite. Nor disdain I so 

The exuberant clusters that Bumastus bears, 

Nor thee, Rhodian, joyfully dedicate 

Unto the gods, when the revel's hour is late ! 

But what doth it boot of names and kinds to tell 




44 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book IL 

Surpassing number ? He who would know them all 
Might count the grains of the clesert-sancl as well, 
Aroused of the hurricane, or the waves that fall 
On all the Ionian beaches, when the East 
Hath smitten the ships and wrought his fearfullest. 



LL grounds do verily not all growths invite. 
Willows for the stream, alders for the tangled fen, 
The childless ash for the bleak and stony height, 
While the strand in the myrtle glorieth. And then 
Bethink how Bacchus joys in a snnny hill. 
And the yew in the bitter breath of the north-wind still, 
Ay, range the uttermost lands of man subdued. 
From homes of orient Araby to the haunts 
AVhere the wild Scythian hath his limbs tattooed, 
And, lo, each realm engendereth its own plants. 
Black ebony thrives in Indian lands alone. 
And the spicy frankincense is Saba's own. 
And what shall I say of the balsam's odorous dew, 
Or the tears of the evergreen acacia-trees 1 
Or how the fame of the Ethiop groves renew, 



Book II. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 45 

White with soft wool, like that most delicate fleece 
The Serian men do gather 1 or explore 
The wildernesses of earth's remotest shore, 
Where India borders upon the ocean river, 
And where no arrow, howso fairly sped, 
Hath overflown the topmost leafage ever. 
Though swift to handle the bow that race be bred 1 
Eemains the blessed apple of Media, 
Bitter and ripening late ; and yet men say 
There is none more meet, by healing, to expel 
• Dark venom from his veins who hath sometime quafl't 
A brewage of herbs whereof the malignant spell 
Of some hard stepmother maketh a deadly draught. 
Now this same citron-tree is fair and tall, 
Favoring in look the laurel most of all, 
And, but for its fine odor widely borne, 
A laurel it might be deemed. The leaves of it 
And clinging flowers are scarce by the tempest shorn ; 
And Median men do find its juices fit 
The face to anoint, the sorry heart assuage, 
And soften the weary pain of panting age. 




46 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book IL 

I UT neither shall Media's groves, her wealth untold, 
ISTor the beautiful river Ganges, verily, 
jN^or the current of Hermus running thick with gold, 
Contest men's praise, my Italy, with thee ; 
Nor Ind nor Bactra venture in any wise 
To vie, nor sands of Arabia sweet with spice. 
Not thine the soil that bullocks breathing fire 
Once turned for the sowing of the dragon's teeth; 
Thou hast ripened no such harvest, dense and dire, 
Of the helms and spears of men upon any heath : 
But the ever-flowing fount in the groaning vine 
Of Massicus, and the olive-trees, are thine ; 
And the flocks are glad in thee ; and the fiery horse 
Issueth out of thy pastures to the battle ; 
And the great bulls bathed in thy holy watercourse, 
Clitumnus, and all the consecrated cattle 
Come forth snow-white, and meet for the gods of Rome 
And the temples whither they lead the triumphs home. 
Perpetual spring is here, and summer days 
In months that are not summer's. Herd and tree 
Give increase twice ; while the tiger's ravening ways 



Book II. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 47 

Are far, and the lion's cruel progeny. 

And he who gathereth herbs doth never light, 

For sorrow, upon the treacherous aconite ; 

Nor ever a mailed monster sweeps the soil 

With measureless curves, nor here, as otherwhere, 

Heapeth a train so huge in ominous coil. 

Here, too, are noble cities, many and fair, 

And the dwellings of men do throng the sheer cliff-side, 

And rivers under the ancient ramparts glide. 

But how shall I tell of the tribute of the sea 

Brought hither ] or the marvel of mighty lakes ? 

Thee, Larius, most of all, and after thee 

Benacus, where the insurgent billow makes 

A noise like ocean's own 1 or the ports rehearse, 

The added strength of the Lucrine barriers, 

The angry chahng of the excluded deep 

Outside the Julian harbor, loud in vain, 

While yet the Avernian channels feel the sweep 

And spray of waters from the Tyrrhenian main 1 

Ay, and this land of ours hath metal treasure, 

Hath veins of silver and copper, and no measure 

Of gold in her streams. Her sons are terrible : 



48 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book II. 

•The Marsians and the SabeUians in their prime, 
Hardened Ligurians, Yolscian spearmen fell, 
And the renowned Camilli, are of this clime ; 
Decius and Marius also, and their sons. 
And the race of the Scipios, tliose doughty ones ; 
And thou, consummate Caesar, who hast subdued 
The ends of Asia, and dost now restrain 
From Eome effeminate India's dastard brood. 
Hail, Saturn's land, great mother of fruits and men ! 
For thee will I praise the arts of the olden days. 
Unseal the sacred fountain of song, and raise 
Ascrsean measures along the Eoman ways ! 



ARK now the varying genius of the earth 
In various parts. Of soils consider the hue 
And the strength, and whether they bring richly forth. 
Lo, desolate tracts, and hillsides bleak to view, 
Regions of rocks and brambles and thin clay 
Do nevertheless rejoice in olives gray 
And full of years ; the which are prophesied 
By the oleasters thronging there anigh, 




Book II. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 49 

And the wildwood berries upon every side ; 

But fields there be where the grass grows lash and high, 

Sweet soils and unctuous, and that laugh with glee 

For the very wealth of their fertility. 

Such be the hollow dells discerned oft 

From mountain summits, and fed by falling streams 

With riches and refreshment from aloft. 

Uplifted to the south-wind the valley seems. 

And the ploughman coming with his curved share 

Misliketh its fair ferns. Yet, verily, there 

Shall passing vigorous vines in after days 

Lavish their clusters, gush with the sacred rills 

We are wont to pour from golden pateras, 

What time his pipe the stout Tyrrhenian fills 

By the altar-side, and the chargers bend and groan 

W^ith the smoking entrails offered thereupon. 

But carest thou rather for flocks and herds, — to feed 

Steers and the offspring of sheep, .and goats that prey 

Upon all sown crops, — behold, the .opulent mead 

Of far Tarentum allureth thee away. 

Or the lost Mantuan plain, lamented ever ! 

Haunted of white swans is yon sedgy river j 

4 



50 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book II. 

And there are limpid fountains and grass in store, 

And the herds who browse thereon the long day through 

Do spend of that fair pasturage no more 

Than one brief night restoreth by its cool dew. 

But the true grain-lands are black with fruitfulness, 

Answering with fatness to the share's impress, 

Crumbling without the compulsion of the plough. 

Thou shalt never see from any other plains, 

Drawn of the staggering bullocks home, I trow. 

So rich a harvest upon the rolling wains. 

Yet the forest-clearings too are apt for corn, — 

They by the axe of the wrathful planter shorn. 

When he carrieth ruin into shades unstirred 

For many a year, and in the wood lays low 

The ancestral dwelling of the woodland bird. 

Who wandereth abroad in heaven, exiled so. 

The wdiile the desert blossoms under the share. 

'Now there be gravelly wastes, which hardly bear 

Eosemary and humble cassia for the bees. 

While scabious tufa, and the Cretan clay 

Devoured of the dark water-tortoises. 

Do verily lure from other fields away. 



Book II. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 51 

And flatter with many a tortuous hiding-place 
And feed with sweetness all the serpent-race. 
But the land of delicate exhalations, gleams 
Of wandering mist and copious draughts of dew 
Given back, of waywardness, in running streams ; 
The land whose garment of greenness aye is new, 
Where, nevertheless, no salt corrosion whelms 
The iron in scales, — ah, that is the home of elms 
With vines, as with a glorious network, bound ! 
It fatteneth flocks ; it is full of olive-trees ; 
Obedient unto the plough that soil is found 
Of him who tilleth it. Wealthier tracks than these 
The shores beneath Vesuvius hardly show, 
Xor Capua nor lone Acerrae, Avhere men know 
Never the hour of Clanius' overflow. 




XD now will I tell of every soil the test. 

Thou seekest a land that is passing dense or 
light; 
Since that for the sheaves of Ceres aye is best. 
And this the Lya3an clusters doth invite. 



52 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book II. 

The eye foretells thee that which is better worth ; — 

Yet sink thou still a pit in the solid earth, 

And when thou hast all the removed soil restored, 

And levelled it with thy feet, — if it fall away 

It is rare, and ready to bear the vine adored 

And to nourish the flock. But the mould that will not stay 

There where its wont was, and doth still exceed 

The hollow, — that is heavy and strong indeed, 

Its ridges are stiff, its clods are obstinate. 

And thou seekest oxen of might to cleave the same. 

But the saline earth man cannot ameliorate : 

It 'is bitter of savor, also, by its fame. 

And the apple ripened in so untoward a place 

Forgetteth its name, and the grape its ancient race. 

And thus it is proven. From the smoky rafter 

The hamper woven of osier thou shalt take 

Or the strainer of the vineyard, and thereafter 

Pour of yon villanous earth therein, and slake 

With sweet spring water, filling it full, and, lo, 

Big drop by drop shall the liquid ooze and flow 

The wicker through, and the bitter taste thereof 

Shall twist the sorry assayer's lips awry. 



Book II. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 53 

But he who the fatness of a soil would prove 
Gathereth a handful up, then flings it by, 
And that which clingeth unto the hand like pitch, 
Nor crumbles apart, is over moist and rich, 
And its grasses tall exceedingly. Yet, for me, 
I like not this luxuriance of blade 
Outrunning the ear, — this rank fertility. 
Remain lands heavy or light, by weight betrayed, 
The dark and the pale discerned of the eye alone. 
And the cold and churlish, hardly to be foreknown 
By the pine, and the baneful fir, and the ivy dun. 



HESE cares fulfilled, be timely labor given 

To furrowing deep some spacious mountain-side, 
Till the brisk breeze coming out of the northern heaven 
Have searched the upturned clod, and wholly dried, 
Or ever thou set the vine of joyfulness : 
Eor friable soils do beyond measure bless 
Its bearing ; and these come of the winds' blowing. 
And the gelid hoar-frost, and the sturdy hind 
The loosened ridges diligently o'erthrowing. 




54 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book II. 

But they to uttermost providence inclined 
Have heed that the plant's earliest nurseries, 
Wherein they are trained for their upholding trees, 
Do liken the vineyards wliere their home shall be. 
Else will the estrangement from their mother earth 
Bewilder the young things, coming suddenly. 
And some consider the aspects of their birth, 
And on the rind the quarters of heaven they write. 
Thus to restore, in the vine's unwonted site. 
The front it bore to the fiery south wind's rage. 
The back it turned to the bitterness of the north ; 
So potent still are the ways of tender age ! 
But first consider whether is better worth 
To place thy vines on the level or the steep. 
And if thou lovest the lowlands rich and deep, 
Set thick thy plants, and verily they shall bear 
The more exuberantly. But if thou choose 
Hillocks abrupt, or the open slopes and fair. 
Give thy rows ample space, nor yet refuse 
To draw, with diligent measurement ajid true, 
The undeviate lines of each green avenue. 
Even as the cohorts of a Eoman leoion 



Book II. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 55 

Are marshalled in the stupendous day of war, 

When the lines of battle are ta'en, and all the region 

Becometh a sea of arms, and burns afar 

With the quiver of brazen waves, while the dire onset 

Still tarrieth, and the war-god walketh yet. 

His choice unmade, the awaiting hosts between ; 

So uniform all thy vineyard's companies. 

Not that the eye alone may revel therein 

With vain delight, but the land not otherwise • 

May nourish them all alike, nor the branches have 

Broad room in the ambient air to climb and wave. 




HAT now of the trenches' depth ? Intrust thy vine 
Secure to a narrow furrow and a small ; 
But the sturdy tree it is bidden to entwine 
Is deeplier set, and the oak more deep than all, 
Whose airiest bough ascends no higher ever 
Than its roots go down toward Tartarus. Wherefore never 
Is it shaken of gales or frost or flooding rain ; 
But, standing in its unmoved tranquillity. 
Outlives unnumbered sons and cycles of men. 




56 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book II. 

Uplifting vigorous arms unto the sky, 

Or spreading abroad ; the steadfast centre made, 

And the stay of all its glorious round of shade. 



ET never thy vineyard f^e the setting day, 
jN'or dream of staying thy vines on hazel-props. 
Withhold the hand would sever the last light spray 
For bedding, or the twigs of the tall tree-tops ; 
For love of the soil doth make the lowlier strong : 
Nor ever, with blunted blade, the soft shoots wrong, 
J^or suffer the olive with its woody wealth 
Inside thy nurseries, lest there fall a spark 
Of fire from the heedless laborers, and, by stealth, 
Feed long on the fatness under the outer bark, 
Till it seize the pith, and into the aether soar, ^ 
Leaping the leafage with a terrible roar. 
And running along the branches, thence to spring 
Victorious above the summits fair and tall ; 
Then, all the forest in flames enveloping, 
It flingeth abroad in heaven a smoky pall 
Pitch-black, impenetrable. And this, the rather 



Book IL THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 57 

When the winds are up in the mountains, and they gather 

In tempest, and fall upon the burning trees, 

And swoop the flame, and carry it bodily. 

Ah, never in desolated tracts like these 

Shall the stem of the severed vine reverdured be, 

Tlie sucker spring, but only the oleaster. 

Baneful and bitter-leaved, o'erlive disaster ! 



)j OLD him unwise who counselleth to lay bare 
The rigid mould while Boreas breathes amain ; 
For winter bindeth in frost-bands everywhere 
The land, and the buried seed may scarce attain 
To fasten its rootlet in the unyielding clod. 
But come when the roseate spring-time is abroad 
With snowy storks, of the trailing serpent hated, 
To plant thy vineyard. Or let this be done 
In the first light chill of summer days belated 
In earliest autumn, ere the receding sun 
Touch the dark solstice with his flying steeds. 
But spring is good for the grove and the wood ; the seeds 
Of plants to be the earth all palpitant prays 




58 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book II. 

In spring-time of the almighty father Sky, 

Who, tarrying not from her so glad embrace, 

Cometh in showers of full fertility, 

And the mightiest things that be, commingled so, 

Minister being unto the least that grow. 

Then the bird-haunted boughs with melody ring, 

And the very herds of the stall have seasons set 

For love's delight. Then the warm zephyrs bring 

Delicious languors unto the land, and get 

Fair offspring of the fields ; and everywhere 

Light mists arise and succulent grasses dare 

Trust the new sunshine. The vine-branches young 

Fear never the surgent Auster, nor the streams 

Forth of the clouds by northerly tempests flung. 

But lavish their buds and leaflets. 0, meseems. 

They were days like these that shone when earth was new! 

Spring was it, beautiful spring, the great sphere through, 

And suave the tenor of the primeval time. 

The wintry East withheld its pitiless breath, 

While the cattle drank the light of the earliest prime, 

And the iron children of men, on their bleak heath. 

Sprang up agaze, and the beasts of the field were given 



Book II. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 59 

Their woodland homes, and the stars were set in heaven. 

And but for this most merciful interval 

Between the frost and the fire, this rest from pain, 

If the skies to the earth relented never at all, 

The labor of all these tender lives were vain. 

Remaineth yet the setting of slips. Behold, 

Thou shalt cover them deep with well enriched mould, 

And the scaly shell or the porous pebble hide 

Therewith ; for so shall the rains of heaven find way, 

And the gentle vapors about the root abide. 

Whence the plant hath life, and leapeth into the day ; 

But some with stones their slips from the floods do shield, 

And some with ponderous shards have half concealed, 

While the dog-star burns o'er the parched and gaping field. 




HY planting done, be instant ever to loose 
The soil at the stem, and the pitiless mattocks 

ply; 

Nor even as yet the patient earth refuse, 

Again and again, with the burrowing share to try, 

Bidding thy laboring bullocks come and go 



60 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book II. 

The length and the breadth of every vineyard row, 
Till the time is come when thou dost ready make 
Slim reeds, and the peeled wands that liken spears, - 
And carefully fit the sturdy ashen stake 
Bifurcate, which the wandering vine upbears 
Till it learn to scorn the winds of heaven, and soar 
The elm-tree's topmost layers of greenness o'er. 



HEN aye, in the early days, when leaves are soft, 
And the tendrils launched with laughter into 
the air 
Do strike, unstayed, for the sunny void aloft, 
The delicate life thou shalt regard, and spare 
The knife's rude edge, and the undue foliage rather, 
With curved and careful fingers, choose and gather. 
But when the extending branches do infold 
The elms in a strong embraco, and ere the fear 
Of the iron have touched them, do not thou withhold 
Thy blade, but the flowing tresses freely shear. 
Then is the time to wield an unflinching sway, 
And curb the career of every flowing spray. 





Book II. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 61 

LSO thou shalt thy roaming flocks with skill 
Eestrain by wattled hedges from the vines, 
While tender these, and all unlearned in ill ; 
For more than the sun of summer when he shines 
His fiercest, or the perils of winter storm. 
Shall the bold gambols thy plantations harm 
Of wanton goats, and buffaloes of the wood, 
And browsing sheep and greedy bullocks. More 
Than the chill of the gathered hoar-frost, or the flood 
Of fire on the scorching rocks, thou shalt deplore 
The venomous tooth of grazing things, — the mark 
Indelibly set upon the wounded bark. 
Therefore, and to atone no other crime, 
Are goats on the vine-god's altars laid alway, 
And still have place the sports of the olden time 
At the cross-roads and hamlets of Attica, 
Where the sons of Theseus, merry with wine, compete, 
And the prize is his who keepeth his footing feat 
On the oiled goat-skin laid in the meadow fair. 
Also the Ausonian exiles out of Troy 
Eecite their unkempt measures, and rend the air 



62 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book II. 

With roysteri ng laughter. And they do employ 

Masks rudely fashioned of hollow bark, and all 

The jovial chorus of their mad carnival 

Is raised unto thee, Bacchus, while they suspend 

Thy rustic likeness upon some lofty pine, 

And the beaming countenance thereof doth lend 

A more prolific progeny to the vine ; 

Eor the circling hills and the deep vales overflow 

Wherever the god his comely face doth show. 

Oh, meet is the reverence unto Bacchus paid ! 

We will praise him still in the songs of our fatherland, 

We will pour the sacred wine, the chargers lade, 

And the victim kid shall unresisting stand. 

Led by his horns to the altar, where we turn 

The hazel-spits while the dripping entrails burn ! 




OW the care of the vines remaineth yet ; — a toil 
Interminable, for thrice in the year must be. 
Ay, even and four times, ploughed the difficult soil. 
And the clods o'erthrown, behoveth diligently 
With the back of the pronged fork to shatter and move, 



Book II. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 63 

And to lighten the shade of all the leafy grove; 

For the tillers of earth a weary round do tread, 

And the path is ever the same of the whirling year, 

And after the uttermost leaves of the vine are shred, 

And the sylvan crown dishonored by the drear 

And chilling breath of the northern blast, no less 

The cares of the coming year the hind do press, 

Till he falleth anew on the vines with Saturn's blade 

And shapelier fashions. Nor do thou delay, 

Eut, earlier than all thy fellows, ply the spade, 

And carry thy prunings to be burned away. 

And house thy stakes, yet stay thy gathering. 

Then, too, in the fall of the year, as in its spring, 

The grapes are in peril of a shade too dense, 

Or bound, mayhap, in a tangle of weed and brier ; 

And the one and the other asketh a toil immense ; 

And howso broad the acres of thy desire. 

The few are better for tillage. Furthermore, 

Thou must gather the reed along the river-shore. 

And the rough broom in the wood, and cherish the life 

Of native willows, wherewith to tie thy boughs. 

So shall thy nurseries have rest from the knife. 



64 



THE GEORGICS OF VEKGTL. 



Book II. 



And the last, sole dresser sing in the perfect rows. 
Yet, even yet, must the earth be wrought with zeal 
To the finest of powder, for that Jove hath still 
Terrors in air for thje ripened clusters' weal. 




; T is nowise thus with the culture of olive-trees : 
No curved knife nor tyrannous rake ask they 
When once they have grasped the soil and faced the 

breeze, 
Earth giveth the plants to drink, and doth repay, 
With heavy harvests, the cleaving share alone. 
Thus the rich fruit that ministers peace is grown. 




also all the trees that are good for fruit. 

Once ^vare of their sturdy limbs, their proper 
powers. 
They make for the stars with many a buoyant shoot, 
All un bell olden to any care of ours. 
Yea, boughs in the wildwood are with fruitage bent, 
And the aviaries of the desert radiant 



Book II. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 65 

With blood-red berries. Even the cytisus 

Hath life in its leaves, and the forest's lofty growth 

Serves to illumine the darkling hours for us 

With torch and fire-light. And shall man be loth, 

In steadfast purpose of heart, all seed to sow ? 

But wherefore dwell on the lordlier things that grow 1 

Behold the humble broom, and the wdllow-trees, 

Food for the flock, for the shepherd shade, provide, 

And garden-hedges and pabulum of bees, 

0, merrily wave the box-groves o'er thy side, 

Cytorus ! Fair the I^arycian shades of fir. 

And happy the fields to see, where laborer 

Wields never the rake in hard anxiety ! 

Yea, the stern forests, of the peaks possest 

Highest on Caucasus, they, incessantly 

Beaten and broken by the spirited East, 

Yield serviceable woods. The pine for the main. 

And the cedar and cypress for our homes, are ta'en 

Thence. One tree giveth the wain its drum-like wheels, 

And one the spokes to be wrought in fashion round 

By the farmer, and one the ships their curved keels. 

The willows in withes, the elms in leaves, abound ; 



66 THE GEORGICS OF VEKGIL. Book II. 

Stout spears are fashioned of myrtle and cornel, too, 

For the battle, and bended bov^^s of Iturean yew. 

Also the linden smooth and the supple box 

Docile to the keen blade and chisel be 

That lend them forms of beauty. Unto the shocks 

Of the torrent the alder answereth buoyantly 

Sped down the Po ; and under the hollow rind 

Of the ilex, and in its empty heart, we find 

The hidden homes of bees. Ah, who shall tell 

If all the bounty of Bacchus may compare 

With tlieirs 1 He hath been the cause of crime as well. 

The Centaurs, mad for slaying, his creatures were, 

Ehoetus and Pholus and Hylseus, — he 

Who fiingeth his huge bowl at the Lapithae ! 



HAPPY beyond all happiness — did they 
Their weal but know — those husbandmen 
obscure. 
Whose life, deep hidden from strife of arms away, 
The all-righteous earth and kind doth w^ell secure. 
What though for them no towering mansion pours 




Book II. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 67 

At early morning, forth of its haughty doors 

And halls, a surge of courtiers untold. 

Gaping on the rich portals, as they pass, 

Fair with mosaic of tortoise-shell, the gold 

Of broidered Yestments and the Corinthian brass ] 

They with no Tyrian dyes their white wool soil, 

Nor yet with cinnamon foul their limpid oil. 

Eut they are at peace in life, in guile untaught, 

And dowered with manifold riches. Theirs the ease 

Of acres ample, and many a shady grot, 

And slumber of sweetness under sheltering trees, 

And living lakes, and the cool of Tempe's valley, 

And the lowing of herds are theirs continually ; 

Theirs are the haunts of game on the wooded hill. 

And theirs a hardy youth, unto humble ways 

Attempered, and patient in their toil, and still 

The old have honor of them, and the gods have praise. 

Justice, methinks, when driven from earth away. 

Left her last footprint among such as they. 




68 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book II. 

Y heart's desire, all other desires above, 
Is aye the minister and priest to be 
Of the sweet Muses, whom I utterly love. 
So might they graciously open unto me 
The heavens, and the courses that the stars do run 
Therein, and all the labors of moon and sun,. 
And the source of the earthquake, and the terrible swell 
Of mounting tides all barriers that break 
And on themselves recoil. Me might they tell ' 
Wherefore the suns of the wintry season make 
Such haste to their bath in the ocean bed, and why 
The reluctant nights do wear so slowly by. 
Yet if it be not given me to fulfil 
This my so great desire to manifest 
Some part of I^ature's marvel, or ere the chill 
Of age my abounding pulses do arrest, — 
Yet will I joy the fresh wild vales among, 
And the streams and the forest love, myself unsung ! 
Oh, would that I might along thy meadows roam, 
Spercheus, or the ins^Dired course behold 
Of Spartan maids on Taygetus ! Who will come 



Book IL THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 69 

And lead me into the Hsemian valleys cold, 

Where, in the deep shade, I may sit me down ? 

For he is verily happy who hath known 

The wonderful wherefore of the things of sense, 

And hath trodden under foot implacable Fate, 

And the manifold shapes of Fear, and the violence 

Of roaring Acheron, the insatiate ; 

Yet blessed is he as well, that homely man. 

Who knoweth the gods of the country-side and Pan, 

Silvanus old, and the Kymphs their sisterhood ! 

Him not the purple of kings, the fagots of power, 

Lure ever aside from his meek rectitude, 

Nor the brethren false whom their own strifes devour, 

Nor the Dacian hordes that down the Ister come, 

Nor the throes of dying states, nor the things of Rome. ' 

Not his the misery of another's need. 

Nor envy of his abundance ; but the trees 

Glad unto his gathering their fruits concede, 

And the willing fields their corn. He never sees 

What madness is in the forum, nor hath awe 

Of written codes, or the rigor of iron law. 

There be who vex incessantly with their oars 



70 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book II. 

The pathless billows of ocean ; who make haste 

Unto the fray, or hover about the doors 

Of palace-chambers, or carry ruthless waste 

To the homes of men, and to their firesides woe. 

One heapeth his wealth and hideth his gold, that so 

He may drink from jewelled cups and take his rest 

Upon purple of Tyre. One standeth in mute amaze 

Before the Eostra, — vehemently possest 

With greed of the echoing plaudits they upraise, 

The plebs and the fathers in their places set. 

These joy in hands with the blood of their brothers wet, 

And forth of their own dear thresholds, many a time, 

Driven into exile, they are fain to seek 

The alien citizenship of some far clime. 

But the tillers of earth have only need to break. 

Year after year, the clods with the rounded share. 

And life is the fruit their diligent labors bear 

For the land at large, and the babes at home, and the 

beeves 
In the stall, and the generous bullocks. Evermore 
The seasons are prodigal of wheaten sheaves 
And fruits and younglings, till, for the coming store 



Book II. THE GEORGICS OF YERGIL. 71 

Of the laden lands, the barns too strait are grown ; 

For winter is near, wdien olives of Sicyon 

Are bruised in press, and all the lusty swine 

Come gorged from thickets of arbutus and oak ; 

Or the autumn is dropping increase, and the vine 

Mellowing its fruit on sunny steeps, while the folk 

Indoors hold fast by the old-time purify, 

And the little ones sweetly cling unto neck and knee. • 

Plump kids go butting amid the grasses deep. 

And the udders of kine their milky streams give down ; 

Then the hind doth gather his fellows, and they keep 

The merry old feast-days, and with garlands crown, 

Lenaean sire, the vessels of thy libation. 

By turf-built altar fires with invocation ! 

And games are set for the herdsmen, and they fling 

At the bole of the elm the rapid javelin. 

Or bare their sturdy limbs for the rustic ring ; 

Oh, such, methinks, was the life the old Sabine 

Led in the land, and tlie illustrious two, 

Eomulus and Eemus ! Thus Etruria grew 

To greatness, and thus did Eome, beyond a doubt, 

Become the crown of the cities of earth, and fling 



72 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book II. 

A girdle of walls her seven hills round about, 

Before the empire of the Dictsean king 

Began, or the impious children of men were fain 

To feast on the flesh of kindly oxen slain. 

Ay, such the life that in the cycle of gold 

Saturn lived upon earth, or ever yet 

Men's ears had hearkened the blare of trumpets bold, 

Or the sparkle of blades on cruel anvils beat. 



UT the hour is late, and the spaces vast appear 
We have rounded in our race, and the time is 
here 
To ease our weary steeds of their steaming gear. 




BOOK 111. 




BOOK III. 

NTO thee, mighty Pales, and unto thee, 
Immortal shepherd of the Amphrysiis, now 
My hymn I raise ; and hearken, ye streams, to me 
And forests upon Ly emeus' mountain-brow ! 
For the themes that held enthralled in song's delight 
The idle sph^its of men are long gone trite. 
Lives any yet who hath never heard the tale 
Of hard Eurystheus ] or of the rites accurst 
Offered of Busirisi or Alcides' wail 
For his lost Hylas 1 Any, as yet unverst 
In the lore of Leto and her Delian shrine, 
Or the story of Hippodamia, and the shine 
Of the ivory shoulder of Pelops, horseman keen ? 
But the path I strive to follow climbeth steeps 
Winning whereunto I shall be crowned of men, 
And the praise of my doings hover about their lips, 



76 THE GEOEGICS OF VERGIL. Book III. 

If life but last ! And, first, unto mine own land 

Will I lead in triumpli home the Muses' band, — 

A J, unto thee, my Mantua, will I bear 

The palms of Edom, and in thy green plain set 

A temple of marble by the water fair, 

Whose reedy banks are as a delicate net 

Inwoven, — there, by the spacious curves, and slow, 

Still wanderings of the noble Mincio, 

Its midmost shrine shall Caesar's image keep. 

And I, in my triumphal robes of pride, — 

Purple of Tyre, — will bid a century sweep 

Of four-horse chariots adown the river side. 

From the Alphean plain, the I^emean wood, 

In the great races, and with the cestus rude, 

Hasteneth all Greece to vie. Then will I bind 

My brows with olive, and offer sacrifice. 

While the slain bullocks, and the trains that wind 

Majestic unto the temples, glad mine eyes. 

Or the varying scenes of the mimic stage appear, 

Where the purple curtain riseth, as though it were 

Uplifted of the wild Britons thereon wrought. 

But the gold and ivory door-posts of my fane 



Book III THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 77 

Shall bear the story of the great battle fought 

With the Gangaridte, writ in sculpture plain ; 

And the arms of conquering Quirinus. There anigh 

The Nile's great current runneth tumultuously, 

Surging with battle array of brazen beaks. 

Then the cities of Asia in their devastation 

Shall be set forth, and the victory-crowned peaks 

Of the Niphates, and the Parthian nation 

Fighting, as they fly, with arrows backward flung. 

Likewise the trophies twain from enemies wrung 

Diverse, — the twofold spoils of the East and AYest. 

And there shall be breathing shapes of Parian stone ; 

The sons of Assaracus, of the names possest 

Which they of the race of Jove do bear alone ; 

And Tros, the founder of Troy, and holy Apollo, 

The author of it. And envious foes shall follow 

With fear the pictured shapes of the Furies fell, 

And the hideous river Cocytus, and the vain 

Toil of Ixlon w^ith the impracticable 

Stone, and the writhed serpents of his pain. 

And the monstrous wdieel. But we, the while they gaze. 

Will be following, along the happy woodland ways 



78 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book III. 

And glades inviolate of the Dryad choir, 
Thj strong behests, Maecenas, upon whose aid 
They still rely who greatly do aspire. 
Wherefore, arise and come, and let there be made 
An end to slothful tarrying ! Loudly call 
The voices along Cithaeron's mountain-wall. 
And Epidaurus, tamer of steeds, and the hounds 
Of Taygetus, while the murmur of their assent 
Sounds through the sighing forests and resounds. 
Hereafter will I gird me with intent 
That Ca3sar s name and the fame of his wars be told 
For years to come, as many as years have rolled 
Since the prime birthday of Tithonus old. 




W the breeder of horses, — he with envy smit 
Of palmy honors in the Olympian game, — 
Or the raiser of bullocks brave, for the ploughing meet, 
Taketh heed first to the mother and her frame. 
Of cows, behoveth it, such an one to seek, — 
Uncomely, stern of look and sturdy of neck, 
With dewlaps that from chin to ankle fall. 



Book III. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 79^ 

The flanks are never too long, the very foot 

Is huge, and largely fashioned the members all, 

And the horns are curved back, over ears hirsute ; 

I^or care I if the hide be spotted with white, 

The face like a bull's, and ready the horns for fight, 

And the neck to the yoke reluctant. Then the tail 

Must lash the steps, however the stature tower. 

So come we unto the years wherein avail 

Lucina's rites, and the hym enseal hour. 

Earlier than the fourth was never known begin 

The fruitful time, and the tenth its end hath seen ; 

None others for the getting of progeny 

Are meet, nor yet for the labor of the plough. 

Wherefore, while yet thy lusty creatures be 

Glad with the vigor of early youth, do thou 

Unbind thy bulls and hasten thee to commend 

Thy herds to Venus, that so thou mayst forefend 

Their wasting by a promiscuous increase. 

For this belongeth unto our mortal doom, — - 

That the best day flies fastest. Cometh disease, 

Labor and age and the clutch of the pitiless tomb. 

Some then must fail, and some thou well mayst spare ; 



80 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book III. 

So guard thee early from loss, provide, repair, 
And be tlie young of the flock thine annual care. 




OR less intent the vigilance thou shalt vow, 
Always and from the beginning of their days, 
Unto those of thine equine herd whom thou 
Hast chosen for the continuing of their race. 
Yov the foal, thou knowest, of illustrious birth, 
Steps high in the field, and his light foot spurns the earth ; 
In ways untried he is leader evermore. 
Gallantly breasteth he the turbulent stream. 
And dares the bridge, unmoved of the vain uproar. 
Slender the head, and the haughty neck of him 
Is arched, the belly short, and the back hath room ; 
And his fiery bosom, soon as the hour is come 
For wedlock, swells with a riotous delight. 
Bay-red his noblest color, or, haply, gray ; 
But turn thee ever away from the cream and the white. 
Then, when the terrible music of the fray 
Soundeth far off, he cannot be let from going, 
With ears alert, and quivering limbs, and blowing 



Book III. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 81 

His nostrils out, the flames of his gathered wrath ; 
While the tossings of his abundant mane do still 
Sweep the right shoulder falling, and his path 
Eings hollow under the beat of his mighty heel. 
Oh, such, methinks, was the terrible courser tamed 
Of Pollux in Amyclse, Cy liar us named ! 
And such were they the poets of Greece have sung, — 
The horses of ^Mars, and great Achilles^ pair, 
And such was Saturn's self what time he flung 
His veiling mane o'er the neck of his flying mare 
At the coming of angry Ehea, and did fill 
With whinnying sharp all Pelion's lofty hilL 




UT even a steed like this must suffer the sloth 
Of growing years and the heaviness of disease. 
Then take him away from his fellows, nor be loth 
To cover the shame of his infirmities. 
For the labor of age is vain, cold its desire, 
And its fleeting battle-rage as a stubble-fire, 
Bodiless, bootless. Therefore thy earliest thought 
Is given to the glory of thy stallion's youth. 



82 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book III. 

Other and lesser traits of him are sought 

Thereafter, and the ancestral breed, forsooth ; 

And how he hath won the victor's palm and worn, 

And how the misery of the conquered borne. 

Who hath not seen the stream of chariots fly 

Forth of the barriers, and devour the plain 

With headlong emulation ] Oh, how high 

The hopes of the youth ! and what a thrill doth drain 

With every beat the exultant heart, as, lo, 

They coil the lash, or, flinging them prone, let go 

The reins ! The axles burn with the speed of their flight. 

They sink from view, then, springing aloft, they seem 

Swept through the void, and outlined u]3on the light. 

No stop, no stay, while the rising sand-clouds gleam, 

And the drivers are dashed with flying foam, and feel 

The breath of those who follow them. Such the zeal 

And the passion of men for praise and victory ! 

^ow Erichthonius first did dare the feat 

Of coupling a car with horses four, while he 

Towered over the wheels in exultation fleet. 

But the rein and the ring and the seat of the rider brave 

The Pelethronian Lapithse found and gave 



Book III. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 83 

Unto mankind. They tauglit the steed aright. 

Curling a scornful hoof, to curvet and spring 

As is meet for a battle charger in the fight. 

But courser and charger are one in that they bring 

Like toil to the breeder. Whether for those or these 

The spirit of 3'Outh and its fine dexterities 

Are sought, and the uttermost fleetness in the way. 

Ay, though the one have erewhile driven before him 

His flying enemies, and the other may 

Glory in EpTrus as the land that bore him. 

Or brave Mycenae, or his lineage trace 

Even to the first of old king Neptune's race. 




HEEEOi^ the breeder, with assiduous care 
To round their limbs with fatness, richly feeds 
The elected stallions who the honors wear 
Of lordly rank and the fathering of steeds, 
Serving them corn in plenty and water pure 
And flowering grasses ; forbidding them endure 
Howso slight labor : lest the weakly frame 
Of the son accuse the abstinence of the sire. 



84 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book III. 

But the mares he starveth to leanness without shame, 

And drives them, vext with the stings of their young desire, 

From running streams and succulent leaves away. 

Or gallops anon till they falter under the ray 

Of the blazing noon, what time the threshing-floor 

Groans heavily 'neath the press of bruised grain. 

And the idle chaff, as the west wind surgeth o'er. 

Is carried abroad. For other cares are vain 

If the seed-land, spent with an ecstasy too keen 

Of bearing, furrowed unto no end have been. 

And seizeth no more the germ to hide within. 




HITS far of the sires. The dams be now thy care. 
And in the set months when their foals they carry 
Harness them unto no heavy wains, nor dare 
Suffer them leap in the road. And be thou wary 
Lest they scour the meadows in all too fleet a course, 
Or breast the stream when the ravening waves are hoarse. 
But feed them rather in solitary places, 
On shadowy hills or by full-flowing streams 
Bordered with moss, and the greenest of all grasses, 



Book III. THE GEORGICS OF YERGIL. 85 

Where they may lie, untouched by the ardent beams, 

In the shelter of mighty rocks and hollow caves. 

Now in the wooded land that Silarus laves — 

Alburnus, of the evergreen ilex-trees — 

Myriads of winged creatures throng the air, 

In the lanmiasje of Rome asili called ; but these 

Are gadflies unto the Greeks ; and they do scare 

All herds with the piercing resonance of their wings. 

And drive them asunder, until their bellowings 

Madden the very woods, the stricken sky, 

And the banks of Tanager, spent with summer suns. 

And such the scourge fierce Juno did apply 

In terrible spite to the heifer lo once. 

But the sires again, whom fervors of noon excite. 

Thou shalt part from the pregnant dams, and feed while 

the light 
Of dawn is new, or the stars lead on the night. 



86 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book III. 




come the calves of the flock to birth ; and he — 
The breeder — careth henceforth for these alone; 
Hastening to brand with name and pedigree, 
That they who are set for the flock's increase be known, 
And they who shall serve at the altars of the gods. 
Or furrow the field and break its bristling clods. 
The remnant leave to graze in the verdant mead. 
But unto those who are meet for the energies 
And the passion of rustic life give thou good heed, 
Admonish them oft, and rule in steadfast wise ; 
For soft the spirit of youth, continually 
And easy to be entreated. Wherefore tie 
Loose coils of delicate withe round the free neck 
Of the young creature, till he have wonted grown 
And doth no more of such compulsion reck. 
Then, of two circlets cunningly bound in one. 
Thou shalt fashion a yoke and bid thy bullocks twain 
Keep equal step thereunder. Or yet again 
They are harnessed to ^mpty carts whose wheels do make 
Barely an imprint upon the dusty road. 
Nor yet, for long, shall the ashen axle quake 



Book III. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 87 

And groan with the labor of its ponderous load, 

Or the gilded pole its banded circles draw. 

But the younglings, docile as yet unto no law, 

Thou shalt not suffer to feed on grass alone. 

Or sedge of the fen, or the willow foliage thin, 

But serve them with gathered fodder out of thine own 

Hand ; nor dream of the motherly cow to win 

Pails brimming white in the fashion of our sires, 

But lavish all on the young one's dear desires. 




R, if thy ruling passion thee incline 

To ride among the fierce alarums of war, 
To speed thy flying chariot through the divine 
Boscage of Jove, or skim the banks afar 
In Pisa of Alpheus, bestow thy care 
First on thy racer, till thou have taught him bear 
The vision of men at arms for strife arrayed. 
And to suffer the blast of the cornet, and discern 
The cry of the wheels behind him, unafraid. 
And the jingle of reins in the stall. And he shall learn 
Increasingly, as he groweth, to rejoice 



88 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book III. 

In the soft flatteries of his master's voice, 

And the silken smoothing of his mane to love. 

So try him from the earliest hour when thou 

Dost from the udders of the mare remove. 

And often in pliant headstalls, him allow 

To show his face, even in his witless years, 

Even while weak, and shaken of idle fears. 

Then, in the fourth summer, after three fulfilled, 

Let him essay his paces in the ring. 

Till he in sonorous, even steps be skilled, 

And knoweth aright his wreathed limbs to fling 

Alternate, and the will of his lord obey. 

Then loosen thy rein, and let him have free way 

And call to the breeze, as, flying over the level, 

He leaveth barely a footprint in the sand. 

Even so do the dry north winds arise and revel 

When they swoop from the Hyperborean marches, and 

The clouds disperse, and herald the Scythian cold ; 

And light and swift, at first, are the billows rolled 

Over the flooded fields and the bearded grain. 

Then cometh a murmur in the topmost trees. 

And the breakers long press inland from the main ; 



Book III. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 

And the gale is abroad o'er lands alike and seas. 

But he, thy reeking courser, scoureth over 

The uttermost reaches of the Elian field, / 

Till the blood-besprinkled foam his lips doth cover. 

Or yet, mayhap, his neck doth easier yield 

To the light harness of the Belgian car. 

Then, when at last his powers obedient are, 

Feed with farrago rich of mingled grains 

Till unto a mighty bulk his limbs have grown, 

For ere thy docile servitor he remains 

He will rise full oft in his wrath and will disown 

Touch, howso light, of the lash in lordly hand, 

And the iron tyranny of the bit withstand. 



I UT all that thy most diligent care can lend 
Of power unto thy beasts v/ill not exceed 
What the blind fury of passion may expend. 
If horses or beeves thy pleasure be to breed. 
Lead then thy bulls into pastures lone away. 
Where mountain-barriers may their course delay, 
Or the breadth of mighty rivers. Or them detain 




90 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book III. 

Secure in the yards and feed abundantly, 

For the strength of their youth consumes in ardors vain 

If they do but look on the heifer young : and she 

'No memory of refreshing groves doth suffer 

In them, nor the banquet of sweet grass they offer, 

Albeit her soft enticements do compel 

To clashing horns and their decision dread 

Her lovers, howsoe'er indomitable. 

Behold the beauteous creature who hath fed 

In the great forest of Sila, and behold 

Her amorous pair in furious conflict rolled ; 

They deal swift hurts alternately, and the gore 

Euns black from all their bodies, and they do knit 

Their obstinate horns, and push with so fierce roar 

That the forest and all the aether echo it. 

And two such enemies never more may bide 

Under the self-same shelter side by side, 

But the conquered goeth away into far exile. 

Scorned of his foe, and wistful glances throwing 

At the stalls where he and his fathers reigned erewhile, 

And he filleth alien shores with his great lowing 

Over the sting of his loss and wounds and shame. 



Book III. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 91 

See, then, that thou invigorate all his frame 

With labor, and be his nightly couch unstrewn 

Save with the stones of the field, and let his fare 

Be foliage rude, and the cutting sedge alone, 

And suffer him scatter the sand, and lash the air 

Preluding battle, and bore with angry horn 

At the boles of trees, in the transport of his self-scorn. 

Then, when his prowess is ripened, maketh he 

A sudden onset upon the heedless foe. 

A wave, beginning to whiten in mid-sea, 

Rolleth its bellying volume shoreward, so 

Eoars over the rocks, and, curling to its fall, 

Foams to its crest, o'erleaps the sea-cliff tall. 

And scatters the sand of the deep's dark bed o'er all. 




EA, all the generations of living things, 

Of men and ravening beasts and grazing flocks. 
The watery tribes, and they of the painted wings, 
Plunge in the self-same fires, and suffer the shocks 
Alike of maddening passion. Under its goad 
The never so merciless lioness roams abroad 



92 THE GEOKGICS OF VERGIL. Book III. 

And mindeth not her whelps. The unshapely bear 

Lavisheth carnage along the ways of men 

And of the forest, and yet more wanton are 

Than their fierce wont the boar and the tiger then. 

And ill in the hour when the lust of the brute hath sway 

Is it wandering in Libyan deserts far away. 

Nay, hast thou never felt the shuddering strong 

Of thy steed's body if he do but scent 

The familiar odor borne the breeze along ^ 

Then shall no mastery howso violent 

Of stinging lash, nor the rider's bit restrain, 

Nor cliffs nor caves nor barrier streams detain, 

Nor the breaker that teareth a mountain from its base. 

Even the Sabellian boars do rushing whet ' 

Rapacious tusks and the loosened soil displace 

With restless feet, and on the tree-stems fret 

Their flanks alternate, and wound and callous make. 

What then of the stripling, when the flames awake 

Of pitiless love, and fire his very marrow ] 

Late is the night, with sudden tempest black. 

And the surge tumultuous where the strait is narrow, 

Yet will he breast the sea, while over his track, 



Book III. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 93 

In thunder part the portals of heaven high, 

And the billows that lash the crags give grim reply. 

But he stayeth not for the cry of the wretched pair 

Who bore him ; nor for hers, his hapless love. 

Who will pass by a cruel death. And wdiy declare 

What stings the spotted lynxes of Bacchus move, 

Or the savage offspring of dogs and wolves, or the rage 

Of the mighty stag, and the w^arfare he doth wage ] 

For the fury of all these tribes is naught to theirs, 

The daughters of them enraged in days gone by. 

Of Venus' self the chariot-harnessed mares 

Who Glaucus rent for his crimes in Potnise. 

]N'ow driven of love through floods and mountains o'er, 

^or Gargarus heed they, nor Ascanius' roar; 

But suddenly, when the smouldering fire doth blaze, 

In the insatiate marrow, and oftenest 

In spring, because the ardor of the spring days 

Rekindles their own, their flight they do arrest 

On some precipitous verge, and, panting there, 

Invite the soft caress of the western air ; 

And verily, howsoever strange the tale. 

They oft-times of no sire impregnate be. 



94 THE GEOEGICS OF VEKGIL. Book III. 

But only of Zephyr. Many a hollow vale 

And stony waste they scour unceasingly^ 

Yet make they never for the orient sun, 

Nor yet for thy dwelling, Eurus, but they run 

Toward the homes of Boreas and Caurus, and the realm 

Where Auster is born in blackness, and the air 

In mournfullest pall of chilling rain doth whelm : 

So falleth, drop by drop, from the groin of the mare, 

The very hippomanes, — oft, as shepherds tell, 

Mixt with the brewage of herbs, whereof the spell 

Of some hard step-mother maketh a potion fell. 



UT the unreturning hours do fleet and fleet, 
While we, enamored of one only strain, 
Eound the same circle. Wherefore it seemeth meet 
We sing of the herds no more ; for yet remain 
The ways of the woolly flocks to celebrate. 
And the long-haired goats. And the toil is truly great. 
But, nevertheless, there is fame to be had therein, 
Ye sturdy churls ; nor dubious hope have I 
The meed of the conqueror in song to win. 





Book III. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 95 

And a lowly theme with praise to glorify. 
Oh, sweet thy lonelier peaks to journey o'er, 
Parnassus, or, following the gentle slope, explore 
A path to Castaly never trod before ! 



E?TD to mine utterance, then, thy majesty, 
Most reverend Pales, the while I give com- 
mand 
That sheep right tenderly fed and housed be 
Until the leafy Spring revisit the land ; 
And straw, and trusses of gathered fern also. 
Thou with no stint shalt over the hard earth strew. 
Lest haply thy soft creatures do sustain 
Injury, that cometh of the icy cold. 
In many a loathsome malady. And again 
Feast them on arbute foliage within the fold, 
And carry them clearest water ; and do thou mind 
That all their cotes, fast closed to the winter wind. 
Affront the sunshine low and the southern sky, 
What time the skirts of the receding year 
Are sprinkled of chill Aquarius from on high. 



96 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book III. 

I^or hold thou, in any wise, the weal less dear — 

For that their worth is verily one — of these 

Than theirs who yield thee that Milesian fleece 

Enrubied in Tyrian vats, and bartered 

For so great price. Their progeny, be it known, 

Are more in number, and they are wont to shed 

Their treasure of milk so far more freely down 

That pails o'erflowing with foam but seem to drain 

The udders, and the glad rivers flow again 

Until the pressure of the fingers flag. 

Meanwhile the hairy side and the hoary chin 

Are yearly shorn of thy Cinyphian stag, 

And the rude webs that these thy tonsures win 

Meet for the shelter of tented legions be, 

Or the sails of the sad wayfarers of the sea. 

Fed in the wilderness of the Lycsean steep, 

On diet of mountain briers and brambles rude, 

The way to their homes they still in memory keep. 

And lead their ofl'spring out of the solitude, 

Albeit they scarce may pass the threshold o'er 

For the heaviness of their teats. Wherefore the more, 

Because they ask so little of human care, 



Book IIL THE GEOKGICS OF VERGIL. 97 

Shalt thou a screen from the snowy gales provide 

And cheerfully still their leafy fodder bear, 

!N^or cover the hay-loft, all the winter-tide ; 

But soon as ever the summer's gladdening word 

Goes forth in the west wind unto either herd, 

Though chilly the wold beneath the morning-star, 

We will hasten unto the pastures hoary-white, 

While the dawn is young, and the tender grasses are 

Dew-pearled as yet, for the roaming flock's delight. 

But when the unclouded heavens are thirsty grown. 

And the glowing hour is ten, and the querulous drone 

Of the cicada shrilleth in all the leaves. 

Lead we to water at well or limpid pool, 

Or where, mayhappen, a wooden trough receives 

The running rills; then off to the valleys cool, 

To while the noon, where the spreading branches be 

And olden shadow of Jove's own mighty tree. 

Or 'neath the impenetrable ilex grove 

Slumbering hard by, in darkness consecrate. 

Then once again to the trickling streams we move. 

Or idly feed, while the afternoon w^ars late. 

Until vesper brings the cool, and the glades once more 



98 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book III. 

Are dewy with moonrise, and the songs do soar 
Of the finch from the thorn, and the halcyon from the 
shore. 




OE yet will I slight in these my rustic strains 
The wanderings of the shepherds of Afric, and 
Their lone encampments upon the silent plains. 
By day and by night for moons they roam the land, 
Leading and feeding their flocks, nor ever bide 
In the homes of men : the desert is so wide. 
His roof and his home, his weapons and his wares. 
The Libyan herdsman carrieth still, and leads 
Laconian dogs, and the Cretan quiver bears. 
Even as the intrepid Eoman soldier speeds 
To shoulder his cruel pack, and march, and show 
An ordered camp in the front of the dreaming foe. 
Not thus the Scythians by the Cimmerian Sea, 
Or the stream of Hister, troubled with sands of gold, 
Or where the measureless bulk of Ehodope 
Sweeps to the north. Perpetually in fold 
The flocks are holden there, nor grasses green 



Book III. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 99 

Do deck the field, nor any leaves are seen ; 
But the very heart of the land is hard with frost 
And formless, under enormous heaps of snow, — 
Seven fathoms far and wide, it lieth lost. — - 
It is winter forevermore, and ever blow 
The icy winds, and the sun's enfeebled ray 
Clears not the cloudy pallor of heaven away, 
Neither in the mid-course of his airy team 
Nor where his car, precipitately descending. 
Flings over the billows wide one ruddy beam ; 
And the sometime running waters aye are tending 
To gather in sudden crusts which grow and grow 
Till the rings of an iron chain do stay the flow ; 
And the clumsy wain goes heavily where the keel 
Did push before ; and brazen vessels even 
Are ofttimes rent, and the very robes congeal 
And stiffen that men indue, and the wine is riven 
With axes. Pools are solid unto their deeps. 
And icicles bristle around unshorn lips ; 
Nor less, the while, the universal air 
Is murk with snow-fall, and the huge oxen stand 
Still, while the frost makes hoary every hair. 



100 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book III. 

But the stags have gathered them into a serried band, 

Stupefied under the new-descended mass 

Their uttermost antlers barely overpass. 

And the charge of the hounds shall fright them never again, 

Nor scarlet feathers hurry the trembling things 

Into any net ; for lo, they have striven in vain, 

And an end is come unto all their laborings 

And pantings under the mountain of the drift, 

When the huntsman falleth on them with weapon swift 

And smites them, belling the while right mournfull}'', 

And slays and bears them away with gleeful shout. 

Oh, a safe life and an easeful, leadeth he. 

The Scythian, in his deep dwelling hollowed out 

Of the bowels of earth, by the fireside, where he rolls 

For the burning heart-of-oak and huge elm boles ! 

There speeds the night with merriment, and men drain 

Draughts of the acid juice of the service-tree, 

Or malten beverage, wherein they are fain 

To find the like of the wine-cup's jollity. 

The blast of the North scarce tames these peoples bold, 

And, smitten of the Rhipaean East, they fold 

In tawny furs their bodies from the cold. 



Book III. 



THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 



101 




OW, if thou follow the breeding of sheep for wool, 
The prickly shrub and the burr and caltrop 
shun, 
Nor less the feed that is all too bountiful ; 
And white be thy flock and soft-fleeced every one. 
Nay, were thy rani's whole body fair as snow. 
Put him away, if only his tongue do show 
Black where the palate is moist, and seek again 
Through all the populous field, lest his increase 
Defiled be by a dusk}^ spot or stain. 
The Arcadian god, with glory of so white fleece, — 
Thus runs the tale, — thee, Luna, did enthrall, 
Calling into the woods, nor didst thou spurn his call. 




j UT the raiser of milk assiduously shall bear 
To the flocks in fold both melilot and lucern, 
And salted grasses ; for, nourished upon such fare. 
They for the running streams do greatly yearn, 
And their udders increase, and a delicate saline taste 
Is in the milk ; and many there be who haste 



102 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book III. 

To part from the side of the dam the kids new-born, 
And circle their tender necks with an iron ring. 
The milk which is given after the earliest morn 
Goeth at night to the press, but the farm-hands bring 
The fruit of the darkling hours, with rising day, 
In moulds to the town hard by, or haply lay 
Dredged with rare salt for the winter's use away. 



j OE let the breeding of noble dogs be found 
Thy least endeavor ; but in thy pack unite 
Swift Spartan whelps to the keen Molossian hound, 
And fatten with whey. For thou needest have no fright 
In all thy stables, with such custodians, 
Of the stealth of the murderous Iberians, 
Or the midnight raids of wolves or robbers heed. 
Then oft shalt thou hunt the tremulous wild ass 
And after the hare and doe thy pack shall speed, 
Or drive, with baying, into the dark morass 
The scared wild boar, or over the mountains high 
Urge the great stag to the net with ringing cry. 





Book III. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 103 

i: EAEX, too, the art to kindle under thy stalls 
Fires of the galbanus and sweet cedar-wood, 
Because the pungent odor thereof appalls 
The offensive serpent. And when thy sheds have stood 
Long years unmoved, the viper, vile to touch 
And timorous, hides from the daylight under such 
And lieth in wait to foul with A^enomous dew 
His victims among the cattle. Haste thee, then, 
shepherd, and him with stocks and stones pursue, 
And beat him down, nor suffer him lift again 
The sibilant menace pf his tumid head. 
So shall the reptile bury him deep for dread, — 
His midmost knots incontinently undone. 
And stilled his quivering tail, and dragging slow 
The very last of his writhings. Such an one 
Informeth all the Calabrian glades w^ith woe, 
And ever his bulging bosom doth erect, 
And scaly back, and belly long bedeckt 
With monstrous markings. He, while the channels yet 
Of the streams are full with spring- tide, and the land 
With the floods that come in the wake of A aster wet. 



104 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book III. 

Dwells in the ponds or hovers ahout the strand, 
And filleth his livid maw, in cruel greed, 
With chattering frogs and fishes. Then, indeed, 
When the fens turn dry, and the fires of summer make 
The fields to gape, he rolleth his burning eyes, 
And leaps to the land, the sometime water-snake. 
Frenzied with thirst, and fear of the ardent skies. 
And he ravageth all the region. Heaven forefend 
That I my limbs in the grassy grove extend, 
And suffer me not beneath the open sky 
To court sweet slumber at that perilous tide 
When he creepeth an ear in the new-found bravery 
Of youth ; for his outworn sheath is flung aside. 
And leaving his brooded eggs, his curling young, 
He flashes aloft the steel of his three-forked tongue. 



) EAE also what the signs and sources be 

Of thy dumb creatures' maladies. For thy sheep 
Are smit sometimes with a loathsome leprosy 
When the chill of the winter's rain hath gone too deep 
Or that of the hoary frost ; or the body shorn 




Book III. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 105 

Is fouled with sweat, or the brier hath rudely torn. 
Then shall thy shepherds lead unto water sweet 
The stricken flock, and see they are all besprent ; 
And the long-fleeced ram shall bodily plunge in it 
Till the current carry him down ; and an unguent 
Of oil and sulphur and silver scales prepare, 
And pitch and wax and the sea-leek mingle there, 
Bitumen black, and the pungent hellebore. 
Or better still the fortune that shall await 
Thy kindly care, if thou put thy knife to the sore ; 
Seeing the ill that is hidden grows more great. 
While thou but sittest and prayest the gods for aid, 
I^or ever a healing hand to the wound have laid ; 
So, when the body is wholly rackt with pain. 
And the fierce insatiate fever burneth deep. 
Behoves to temper the fire, and smite the vein 
Beneath the foot till the blood therefrom do leap. 
Such is the wont of the wild Gelonian men ; 
So do the Thracians of Bisaltia, when 
They hie them to Ehodope for pasturage 
Or the Dacian desert, and with milk of mares 
Commin.gjled with horses' blood their thirst assuasre. 



106 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book III. 

But the dam who still remote from her fellows fares, 

Who daintily pulls at the grass-tips, or doth make 

For the restful shade, or all in languor take 

Her feed, as she lies outstretched in the open plain, 

Who stray eth at night into lonely haunts away. 

And alway folio weth last of the moving train, — 

Her, without any tarrying, thou shalt slay ; 

Or else the infection of her ill severe 

Will taint the flock or ever thou knowest fear. 

For the squall at sea, the herald of tempest dire, 

Strikes not more suddenly than the pests that fall 

Ofttimes on the flock ; nor singly do they expire, 

But the summer camp is desolated all : 

The flock that is and the hope of the coming days 

Perish in one, — the first and last of the race. 

As well he knoweth who the ascent hath made 

Of Alpine summits, or, haply, ta'en his way 

To the hill-forts of the ^oric land, or strayed 

Along the Timavus in lapydia. 

Where the shepherd's realm lies desert many a year, 

And the glades are solitary far and near. 

For there, on a burning autumn long gone by. 



Book III. THE GEORGICS OF YERGIL. 107 

The very heavens with pestilence were stricken, 

The peaceful flocks all given over to die ; — 

Yes, even the savage beasts in their lairs did sicken. 

And the ways of death were* manifold ; for, indeed. 

The fountains of water were poisoned and the feed. 

And first a pitiless fever did contract 

The veins, and cramp the sufferer's limbs. Thereon 

Followed the flow of a deathful cataract. 

Where the bones dissolved piecemeal and were gone. 

And ofttimes, in the midst of a sacred rite 

Among the ministers of the altar, dight 

In woolly cap, and fillet like unto snow, 

Fell the ill-fated victim and expired. 

Or ever the lagging priest could deal his blow ; 

Ifor were the entrails upon the altar fired ; 

'Not might the soothsayer answer men who prayed. 

The knife came clean from the throat, and the thin gore made 

Barely a stain on the surface of the sand. 

Then perished amid the meadow blossoms gay 

The bullocks in never counted numbers, and 

At cribs o'erflow^ing their sweet lives yielded they. 

And unto the kindly canine race there came 



108 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book III. 

Fierce madness, and breathless coughing racked the frame 

And the swollen jaws of the unwieldy sow. 

The conquering courser e'en forgot his pride 

And passion, — forgot the grasses where they grow, 

And turned him, sick, from the limpid fount aside, 

Eestlessly pawing the earth. Despondent hung 

His ears, the while there were fitful sweatings wrung 

Out of his members, and the same were cold 

As ice, in the sufferers ordained to die, 

Whose hard, hot skin gave not unto mortal hold. 

And these so ominous warnings, verily, 

Were given long days before the fatal end. 

But when the advancing ill began to tend 

Ever to worse, the eyes did kindle as flame ; 

Deep-drawn, and mingled with groanings of distress 

And spasms in all the entrails, the breath came ; 

Dark gore from the nostrils flowed, and the tongue did press 

The throbbing throat most cruelly. One sole way 

There seemed the pangs of the dying to allay, 

And wine was given them in inserted horns. 

Which yet did hasten the end, and feed the fire ; 

For now on himself, the death-struck creature turns, 



Book III. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 109 

(May the gods avert from the pious woe so dire, — 

Eeserve it unto our foes !) and, in despair, 

Doth his own failing memhers mangle and tear. 

And oft the steaming bullock, striving to thole 

The ponderous plough, fell prostrate suddenly 

"With bloody vomit, and cry of mortal dole. 

Then did the ploughman hasten him to untie 

The yoke, and the bereaved one divide 

Eight sorrowfully from his fated brother's side ; 

And the share stood fixed, and the task was left undone. 

The shadiest grove, the sweetest of meads no more 

Might waken the longing of the passing one, 

^or rivers brighter than amber, where they pour 

Over the pebbles toward the fair champaign. 

For the long flanks lay unnerved, and the eyes in vain 

Struggled with stupor, while the enfeebled neck 

Swayed heavily earthward. And what boots him now 

To have lovingly toiled for men, who little reck 

The weight of the clods he hath lifted with his plough? 

What boots the innocent life that ne'er hath known 

The flow of the Massic cup, nor boards that groan 

W^ith manifold courses ] But the herb of the field 



110 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book III. 

And the leaf of the tree supplied their banquetings, 

And the wine of the feast was that the rivers yield 

When they run fast and clear, and the bubbling springs ; 

And the healing slumbers ne'er were stolen, of these 

Meek revellers, by hard anxieties ! 

Men say that never in "all those regions far 

Were the oxen sought in vain, ere that dread time. 

For the sacred service of Juno ; but her car. 

Unequally drawn of buffaloes, did climb 

The way to the stately temples. And men did lay 

Their helpless hands to the mattock, and essay 

Themselves to turn the sod and bury the grain, 

Or patiently bow their necks to the yoke and o'er 

The steeps of the mountains draw the creaking wain. 

The wolf went prowling about the fold no more, 

A nightly terror unto the flock ; for, lo, 

He had cowered to a sharper fear, and the timorous doe 

And fleet-foot stag did unregarding roam 

With ravening dogs about men's dwellings. And then 

There came a time when the sea did fling as foam, 

Or the rejected bodies of shipwrecked men. 

Her tribes to the shore. And in the self-same days 



Book III. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Ill 

The seals escaped to the rivers in their amaze ; 

And in her tortuous hole the viper died, 

Having sought sanctuary there in vain, 

And the venomous hydra, bristling terrified 

In scaly armor. The fields of air were sane 

Even unto the birds no longer then, who sped 

Precipitately from their dwellings overhead ; 

'Nov change of pasture might any more avail 

The flock, for misery came of every one 

Of the precious healing arts ; their heads did fail, — 

Amythaonian Melampus, and the son 

Of Phil^ra, Chiron. And pale Tisiphone 

Brake forth of the Stygian shades, ferociously 

Tossing her cruel head in the light of day, 

Driving before her Pestilence and Affright. 

And the arid banks of the rivers rang alway. 

And the pasture slopes, with bellowings infinite 

And sorrowful bleatings ; while the goddess of woe 

Multiplied slaughter, and the heaps did grow 

In the very stalls of putrefying dead, 

Whose skins were good no more for the garments of men. 

Nor was the filth of their flesh abolished 



112 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book III. 

By floods of water, nor could the fire make clean ; 

Hardly might even be shorn the victim's fleece, 

So was it eaten away by dire disease. 

And the w^ebs, if woven, crumbled under the touch ; 

Or did men seek, infatuate, to assume 

Those hateful vestments, out of the limbs of such 

There brake a sudden torrent of sweat, a fume 

Of loathsomeness. Then burning pustules came, 

Nor long delayed the accursed fire to claim 

Its piteous prey in the infected frame. 



BOOK IV. 



BOOK IV. 




HE honey of heaven's own giving next I sing, 
And lend me thine aid, Maecenas, also here ; 
For the slender theme shall waken thy wondering 
When thou see'st the ways of a mimic race appear, 
Its works and its wars and its high-souled chivalry ; 
And not as the labor slight shall the glory be, 
If the stern gods will, and Apollo favor me. 




SHELTERED place for the hive shall first be 
sought. 

Where never is reft the homeward-winging bee, 
By frolic winds, of the pollen he hath brought. 
And suffer not sheep nor petulant kid make free 
With the flowers anigh, nor the vagrant heifer pass, 
To scatter the dew and bruise the springing grass. 



116 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book IV. 

And the gayly harnessed lizard and bee-eater 

Put from those opulent dwellings far apart ; 

Yea, all the birds, but the swallow chiefly, her 

With the mark of a bloody hand upon her heart ; 

For they ravage the region far and wide, and' seize 

And bear in their beaks away the wandering bees, 

A delicate morsel for their boisterous brood. 

But choose thee a site beside a bubbling spring, 

Or a pool with vesture of verdant moss indued, 

Or a rivulet through the grasses hurrying 

Where a palm or an oleaster tall may cool 

With grateful shadow the rustic vestibule, 

That so in the happy, early spring, when first 

The new-made monarchs their winged hosts array, 

And gamesome and glad for their deliverance burst' 

The young from the hive, they may cool them from their 

play 
On grassy banks hard by, or a sheltering tree 
Invite to its leafy hospitality. 
Then into the water, be it quick or still, 
Fling stones, or carry a willow over it 
For a bridge, whereon the bees may rest at will. 



Book IV. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 117 

And spread their wings to dry in the sunny heat, 

What time the wind may have caught them straying wide, 

And sprinkled with spray or pkmged them in the tide. 

Green grow the cassia in all the region round, 

The blossom of thyme make sweet the summer slopes, 

And heavily breathing savory abound. 

And violets quaff the trickling water-drops. 

But whether the hives that are wrought for bees of thine 

Ee hollowed of bark or woven of osier fine. 

Make aye their openings narrow ; for that oft 

The honey is curdled by the wintry chill, 

And again the ardor of summe* maketh soft. 

And the cold and the heat alike do work it ill ; 

Wherefore not vainly do the diligent bees 

Besmear with layers of wax the interstices 

Of their small dwellings, and their openings fill 

With flowers and the pollen of flowers, and alway keep. 

Gathered and stored for the uses of their skill, 

A glue more dense than the gum the pine-trees weep 

On Phrygian Ida. But, if men say aright. 

The bees themselves, oft burrowing out of sight. 

Make snug their secret domiciles underground, 



118 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book IV. 

Or deep in the heart of crumbHng rocks dispose ; 

Or where a cavernous tree-trunk shuts them round 

With hollow bark. Do thou then deftly close 

The chinks in their cells with delicate paste of clay, 

And gather a few light leaves thereon to lay ; 

But suffer never a yew those roofs anigh, 

Nor roast at the fire the ruddy crab, nor set 

Thy hive where thou hast a fathomless fen hard by, 

Reeking with odors lieavy and foul ; nor yet 

Where the rocks ring hollow when thy blow hath stirred, 

And the startled shape recoils of the spoken word. 



I OR the rest : when Sol in golden armor dight 
Hath driven the winter into banishment, 
And earth and air do bask in the summer light. 
The bees range over the country-side, intent 
On forest-nooks where the purple flowerets gleam, 
Or pause on the wing to sip the running stream. 
Then build they a bower for their young ; and would I 

knew 
The secret of sweetness them doth gladden so ! 




Book IV. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 119 

For they the new-wrought wax of their cells imbue 
With wonder of honey, over-rich to flow. 
Thereon, when out of their prisons break the swarm, 
And sail for the stars through the sunny air and warm, 
Thou shalt follow the dun cloud carried in the wind's 

wake 
To the water sweet or the shades alluring still. 
And with scattered herbs a savor of sweetness make, 
The lowly balm or the bruised' melisphy 11, 
Then raise, with beaten cymbals, a martial din, 
Till thou the bees to their perfumed seats do win, 
And, clinging by twos, they hide their cells within. 




UT go they to war, — for the wrath of rival kings 
Carrieth commotion to this busy race, — 
At once and afar, thou knowest their quiverings 
Of heart for strife, and the rage of the jDopulace ; 
For a brazen murmur of Mars, — a grating call, 
As the broken blast of a trumpet, summons all 
The laggers unto the fray. Excitedly, 
On flashing wings, they hurry them to the meet, 



120 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book IV. 

And, making ready for battle as they fly, 

They on their beaks their stinging javelins whet, 

And throng the king and the royal cell about. 

And loudly unto the foe their challenge shout. 

Till the battle-field is clear, and wholly fair 

The heaven of spring. Then sally they from their gates. 

And loud is the concourse in the deeps of air 

"What time the confused host agglomerates 

Into a mighty sphere, and gathered so 

Is rolled precipitately upon the foe. 

Then the sky thickens as it were w^ith hail 

Or the rain of acorns out of a shaken oak. 

Eut they of the royal pinions rise and sail 

Eound the rajiged bands, whose vision doth provoke 

Heroic valor within the tiny breast ; 

Till they of the high resolve become possest 

Eight steadfast in the enemy's front to stand 

Till the one or the other army breaks in rout 

Under the weight of the victor's heavy hand. 

Yet a handful of dust flung upward, past a doubt, 

This mighty conflict suddenly may compose, 

And the fury of all those spirits bellicose. 



Book IV. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 121 



UT soon as the rival chiefs return from strife, 
^lill Do thou on the seeming worser straightway fall 
And slay, lest mischief come of his fruitless life ; 
While the better is bidden reign in his void hall : 
For twain they are, and eminent to behold 
The one, and flecked all over with rugged gold 
And burning in ruddy mail ; but the other lags 
Unkempt, inglorious, and along the way 
The sprawling bulk of his body slowly drags. 
And the forms of the people vary — so they say — 
Even as the faces of their sovereigns do : 
i'or some are coarse, and squalid unto the view, 
As wayworn and bedraggled travellers be 
Who spue from fevered lips the dust o' the road ; 
But the others do dazzle and flash incessantly 
With equal dashes of golden fire bestrewed ; 
And this, the worthier race, whence thou shalt get 
Sweet honey in its season, nor only sweet. 
But clear and strong, for the taming of Bacchus meet. 



122 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book IV. 




OW when the winged creatures, far dispread 
In the free heaven, do sport them without aim, 
Spurning their hives and their homes abandoned, — 
Forbid these volatile ones their wanton game. 
Whereto, — and, verily, 't is an easy thing 
Thou needest but shear the pinions of the king. 
For never, the while the monarch's feet delay, 
Dare any subject creature insolent 
Along the loftier aether pursue his way, 
Nor sever the standard from the royal tent. 
Let neighboring gardens then the bees invite. 
Odorous, and all with saffron blossoms bright, 
And old Priapus, him of the Hellespont, 
Defend with sickle of willow from the theft 
Of man and bird. And diligent souls are wont 
To plant by the hive the thyme, or the pine-tree reft 
From its home in the hills. Ay, such as these do wear 
Their hands with labor the wilding plants to bear 
And set in the earth, and water with kindly care. 



Book IV. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 123 




ND verily were it not that I draw near 

My destined port, — nigh ready to furl my sail 
And tinish my task, — right gladly would I here 
Sing of all blossoming gardens where avail 
Man's loving cares, and of the roseate bowers 
Of Psestum, twice in a summer fair with flowers, 
And the joy of the en'dive where the rivulets pass, 
And the joy of their verdant banks in parsley-blow, — 
And how the cucumber twines amid the grass, 
And wonderfully its fruit increaseth so. 
And the flexile thorn-twigs would I celebrate, 
And sing of the sweet narcissus flowering late. 
And the myrtle that loves the sea, and the ivy dun. 
I mind how, under Tarentum's turrets high, 
V^here the brown waves of the river Galaesus run, 
Freshening the yellow fields of harvest, I 
An exile of Corycus, a man of eld. 
Tilling a few spent acres, once beheld. 
I^or apt for the plough were these, nor the bearing of 

corn, 
To nourish the flock, nor kindly unto the vine. 



124 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book IV. 

But how had he filled the home of briers forlorn 

With goodly garden-herbs, and bidden to shine 

White lilies and vervain round his ordered beds, 

And esculent poppies bear aloft their heads ! 

The treasure of kings in his content he found, 

And, lingering late in the field, he came at eve 

To a humble board with unbought dainties crowned. 

His the first rose of the summer to receive. 

The first of the autumn's apples : and he, anon, 

When fetters of ice w^ere laid the streams npon, 

And the frost of surly winter had riven the rocks, 

And the streams were chained with ice, was fain to 

shear 
The blooming hyacinth of her lovely locks ; 
While he chid for its tarrying the vernal year 
And the lazy zephyrs long upon the way. 
Wherefore his new-born swarms did see the day 
Earlier in spring, and in their numbers more 
Than all beside. He, from his combs exprest 
The foaming honey in more abundant store. 
And limes and the most luxuriant pines possest ; 
And never a fruit did set in flowerin(]f-time 



Book IV. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 125 

Upon his trees, but ripened in autumn's prime. 
His even the art the ehns well grown to bear 
Afar, and set them anew in ordered rows, 
Likewise the fruited sloe and the hardy pear 
And the plane-tree, offering shade where water flows 
And wanderers drink. But these fair themes must I, 
Narrowed in envious limits, hasten by, 
Leaving their tale to my posterity. 




UT favor me yet, while I the story tell 

Of marvellous powers the bees do hold of 
Jove, 
Because in his natal hour they served him well ; 
Swift to the cymbal's brazen din to move 
Of the Curetes, and unwearying, 
^ ' In the caverns of Dicte, fed the heavenly king. 
For they, of all the little creatures of earth, 
Alone do gather in cities, and uprear. 
As one, the sons to whom they have given birth, 
And order their ways, lifelong, by laws austere ; 
While the joys of the hearth, and certain habitations 



126 THE GEORGICS OF YERGIL. Book IV. 

Are theirs, and a fatherland among the nations, 
And theirs the forethought, even in summer-tide. 
To toil for the time of tempest and of want. 
And that they have gleaned, securely away to hide. 
While some do, under a steadfast covenant. 
Watch over the store ; and some are busy a-field ; 
And some are gathering the lucid gums distilled 
From tree- stems, or the tears of the daffodil, 
Wherewith to make the beginnings of the comb 
Within the walls of the hive, and thence, with skill 
To hang the persistent wax ; and other some 
The full-grown hope of the race lead forth to light ; 
And others yet, with honey as nectar bright. 
The crowded cells distend. While unto a few 
It falleth to stand like sentries at the gates, 
By turns the cloudy tokens of rain to view 
In heaven, or on the returning toilers wait 
And ease of their fardels. Else, in battle array 
Forming, they from their dwellings chase away 
That indolent folk, the drones. And everywhere 
Is the glow of toil, and the honey's thymy scent. 
ISTo busier the monster band of Cyclops, there 



Book IV. THE GEORGICS OF VEKGIL. 127 

In the mountain, on their thunderbolts intent, 

Handling the molten masses, prompt to ply 

The bellows, fashioned of bull's-hide mightily, 

Or to quench the hiss of the metal in the wave ; 

While the weight of their anvils maketh ^tna groan, 

And the powerful arms a giant rhythm have, 

As the bulk of the iron is lifted and is thrown 

From one to other upon the forceps strong. 

Not otherwise — dare I liken, in my song. 

Small things with go-eat — are the Cecropian bees, 

B}'' the inborn hunger of possession driven 

To labor in kind. Wherefore their fortresses 

And towns are aye in the ward of the ancients given, 

And the curious carving of each roof-tree small. 

But the young and strong, returning at even-fall, 

Weary of limb, their treasure of thyme unlade ; 

For that they have supped on cassia, or arbute-boughs, 

Or off the golden willow a banquet made, 

Or where the crocus's fiery blossom shows, 

Or dark-blue hyacinth, or the lime-tree sheen. 

And the rest of all is one, as their toil hath been, 

Till the morn returns again, and the gates are wide. 



128 THE GEOEGICS OF VEKGIL. Book IV. 

And the bees do never upon their going stay, 
But range, until, admonished of even-tide, 
Back from their feasting in all the fields come they. 
And, ready for rest and shelter yet once more. 
Buzz in the boundaries, murmur about the door. 
Till unto their bedchambers they softly creep 
And silence follow eth, all the night unbroken. 
While each tired body getteth his own sw^eet sleep. 
And never, in sooth, if coming rains give token, 
Venture they far abroad, nor scale the height 
Of heaven when the East is risen in his might. 
But, under the sheltering ramparts of their town. 
Go safe to water, and brief the flights they make ; 
Or, as light skiifs the turbulent weaves w^ould drown 
Take ballast of sand, they tiny pebbles take 
And lift in the air, and, stayed thereon, resist 
The fluctuant motions of the hollow mist. 
This also is matter of praise and wonderment, — 
The custom of bees in bringing forth their young; 
For never do they cohabit, nor are spent 
Their frames with fury of passion, nor yet wrung 
With anguish of travail, but, off dainty leaves 



Book IV. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 129 

And delicate grass-blades, evermore receives 

Her little ones on her lips the mother bee. 

She, too, whenever the throne doth vacant fall, 

Findeth a king, with following of Eomans wee, 

And shapeth anew each waxen court and hall. 

Wherefore though oft the bees, allured wide 

By love of the beauteous blossoms, and by pride 

In the gathering of honey, break on cruel stones 

Their fragile wings, and under their burdens die ; 

Though narrow the life-span of these generous ones, — 

Seven summers barely, — yet immortally 

The race lives on, and steadfast evermore 

The star of their line. They sires of sires tell o'er, 

Ay, and they render homage unto their king, 

Such as not Egypt, nor the famed Lydian land, 

Nor Median Hydaspes, nor the Parthians bring. 

One only soul hath all the obedient band. 

He sitting secure ; but, once their monarch lost, 

Eent is the covenant of the loyal host, 

And rent the curious wicker cells wherein 

Was laid their honey treasure ; for he the lord 

Of all their labor and all their love hath been. 



130 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book IV, 

Forever throng and press the vociferous horde 
Eoiind the king's going, and on their shoulders bear 
Him oft j for him imperil their bodies fair, 
And wounds for him and glorious death do dare. 




ND some who deepliest on these marvels dwell 
Discover an emanation in the bees 
Of the world-soul divine, — a breath as well 
Of the pure aether. Unto the thought of these 
One same divinity dwelleth everywhere 
In the reaches of earth and sea, and the deeps of air ; 
Out of whose infinite sources all that live. 
Men and the tribes of the field and of the wood, 
Their vapor of being do at birth receive. 
Then tender it back again, and in the flood 
Eemerge. For death herein is found no place. 
They to the host of the stars do wing their ways, 
And the summits of heaven behold their endless days. 



Book IV. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 131 




OW he who is fain to enter the tiny house, 
And steal the treasure of sweetness hid therein, 
Carrieth water within his mouth, and blows 
First over the hive, the bees therefrom to win. 
Or drives them forth with waving of pungent smoke. 
The opulent produce of this busy folk 
Is twice in the year exprest and harvested : 
Once when the Plead Taygete first doth smile 
Over the land, and under her light foot tread 
The river Oceanus ; and again, erewhile, 
When the self-same star is flying from heaven, fain 
To hide from the stormy Fish in the winter main, 
Sadly. But what immeasurable wrath. 
What lacerate Avounds for them who seek her store, 
What venom infused, the insulted creature hath ! 
She drives her barb in the veins with a thrust so sore, 
The living weapon doth in the wound remain. 
But if thou dreadest the winter's cruel strain. 
And, taking thought for the morrow of bees, dost feel 
Pity on their sore hearts and fortunes low, 
What lets thee from enkindlin^j for their weal 



132 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book IV. 

Thyme branches under the hive, dissevering so 

The empty cells 1 For the lizard unbeknown 

Hides there, and the beetle blind his couch hath strewn, 

Or the doingless drone sits down at another's board, 

Or the hornet fierce doth war with arms unfair, 

Or the direful moth, or the spider most abhorred 

Still of Minerva, curtains the doorways there 

With swaying webs. The lowlier fallen before 

Yon stricken race, they labor to rise the more, 

And flower-built granaries crowd with richer store. 




HE like, moreover, of human maladies. 

Anguish of sickness, languor in all the frame. 
The law of their being bringeth unto the bees. 
Kote then the unvarying symptoms of the same : 
The color is changed in them who suffer thus, 
And wild the countenance and cadaverous ; 
Till the bodies of such as lose the light of day 
Forth of their homes are by their fellows borne, 
And laid with sorrowful funeral rites away ; 
Else cling they unto the portals, all forlorn 



Book IV. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 133 

With knifted feet, or in their cells lie still, 

Famished and spent and shrunken with mortal chill. 

Dull now the murmur that falleth upon the ear j 

A deep, incessant whispering, like the tone 

Of wintry Auster within a forest sere, 

Or the vexed ocean when his billows moan 

Eefluent, or even as ravening fires do roar 

Shut in close furnaces. Wherefore let me implore 

Thou light the galbanus for its fragrant smoke 

Hard by ; or proffer honey in tubes of reed : 

So putting a heart in thy outwearied folk, 

And tolling them forth to their remembered feed. 

And flavor the lure wherewith thou then dost ply 

W^ith bruised galls and savor of rose-leaves dry. 

Or the rich liquor that remaineth of wine 

Long boiled, or the juices of Psithias' dead-ripe fruit, 

Or Attic thyme, or the centaury's fragrance fine. 

But free in the fields, asking no long pursuit. 

There groweth a star-like flower the laborers call 

Amellus, hardy and many-branched and tall ; 

And the golden head of it is ringed around 

With countless rays of the violet's dusky hue ; 



134 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book IY. 

Bitter to taste, yet in fair garlands bound 

For holy altars. In valleys grazed anew, 

Or oft, by the windings of Mella, shepherds cull 

This flower, whose root with sweet wine thou shalt mull, 

And set by the doors of the hive in baskets full. 




UT the offspring of bees oft faileth suddenly, 
Nor means hath any the master to restore 
Their line ; wherefore commemorate will I 
That which the lord of Arcadia learned of yore, 
And how from the weltering gore of bullocks slain 
The honeyed race hath wakened to life again ; 
So then, — the marvellous fable to relate. 
From its first origin in the long ago, — 
A land there is where the dwellers fortunate, 
In Macedonian Can5pus, behold the slow 
Submerging of all the land by river I^ile 
And visit their fields in pictured craft, the while. 
Hard by the Persians dwell, wlio carry the quiver. 
But Egypt getteth her green from that black loam 
Borne wide abroad by her seven-disparted river. 



Book IV. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 135 

Swept onward still from the dusky Ethiop's home ; 

And the lineage of bees is indestructible 

In all that land by the power of this one spell. 

For a site confined is chosen, seeing it falls 

In with this very purpose, and thereupon 

A structure set, and bounded by four straight walls, 

With a narrow tiled roof above them thrown. 

And windows four, affronting the winds of heaven, 

And a slantwise entrance unto the daylight given ; 

Thereafter a youthful steer is found and ta'en. 

With horns already curling his forehead o'er, 

And the breath of his mouth and of his nostrils twain 

Smothered and stayed although he struggle sore ; 

And all with violent beatings bruised and blent 

The viscera within the whole integument. 

Then do men leave the carcass imprisoned so. 

First crowding the ribs with thyme-boughs odorous 

And new-culled cassia. When first the west winds blow 

And waken to life the waters do they thus. 

Ere the rosy blossoms in all the meadows gleam. 

Or the prattling swallow hang his nest from the beam. 

And the days go by, and the liquor seethes lukewarm 




136 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book IV. 

In the macerate bones, till, wonderful to behold, 
Myriads of living things, footless, do swarm 
Thereout, then straightway resonant wings unfold 
And throng and throng the aether like summer rain, 
Or shafts the string of the archer's bow that strain 
When the agile Parthians people a battle-plain. 



UT what divinity showed us this device ? 

Tell us, Muses ! How did our race receive 
Its earliest hint of so strange artifice 1 
When Aristaeus the shepherd essayed to leave 
The borders of the Peneus and Tempe's vale, 
He had wholly lost his bees, thus runs the tale. 
And sorry with sickness, and with hunger faint, 
He stayed his foot the uttermost source beside 
Of the holy stream, and uttered wild complaint : — 
*^My mother, my mother Gyrene, who dost bide 
Deep under these gurgling waters, tell me why 
Thou barest me to so cruel destiny ] 
Is not my race illustrious, ay, divine ? 
Thou saidest Apollo of Thymbra was my sire. 



Book IV. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 137 

Oh, whither is fled that sometime love of thine 1 

Why didst thou bid me unto the skies aspire? 

For now, behold, my mother although thou be, 

I am losing the crown of my mortality. 

]\Iy hard-won fame for the curious care I spent 

Alike on the harvest and the herd, — the vain 

Fruition of infinite experiment. 

If then thou hold mine honor in such disdain, 

Uproot my nurseries fair with thine own hand. 

Set fire to my stalls like a foe, my harvest-land 

Lay waste, and the promise of my crop consume, 

Or wield thee a ruthless axe my vines among ! " 

Then, under the waters in her far-off room, 

The mother discerned the cry of her son's wrong. 

She sat with her nymphs about her, and they did pull 

For the spinning, fleeces of Milesian wool. 

Saturate with hue of ocean's hyaline. 

There were Drymo and Xantho, Ligea, Phyllodoce, 

With bright hair clustering about the neck's white sheen ; 

Nesssea and Spio, Thalia, Cymodoce ; 

And the golden-tressed Lycorias was also set 

Beside Cydippe, — the one a virgin yet, 



138 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book IV. 

The other happy in her first motherhood. 
And Beroe was there and Clio, — sisters these 
Born of tlie ocean, and gold-girt, and indued 
Alike with garments fashioned of tinctured fleece ; 
And Ephyre and Opis, and the Asian maid 
Deiopea ; and last among them stayed 
Swift Arethusa, with arrows laid in rest ; 
While Clymene in their circle sang the tale 
Of the futile anger of Yulcan, and how the zest 
Of Mars in theft and strategy did prevail ; 
Then the loves of the mighty gods innumerable, 
Beginning with Chaos, would in order tell. 
But, captivate by the melody, while they all 
Slow from their spindles the soft flax unwound, 
Again the ears of the mother caught that call 
Of anguish, and from their glassy seats around 
All startled sprang. Her fellow-nymphs before, 
The yellows-haired Arethusa first upbore 
Her head above the waters and gazed amain, 
And far off sounded her A^oice : " sister mine, 
Cyrene, thou wast verily not in vain 
Heart-stricken by yon sad cry ! That son of thine. 



Book IV. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 139 

Thy dearest Aristseus, dissolved in woe, 

Stands where the waters of Father Peneus flow, 

And thy hard heart most bitterly doth upbraid." 

Then was the mother smitten anew with fear. 

" Go bring him, — bring him hither to me ! " she said, 

" Who better than he hath right to enter here 

O'er the sill of the gods ? " And the flood she bade 

divide, 
That her boy might find free footing under the tide. 
So came he ; while before him still withdrew 
The tall waves, curving crag-like, and gave him place. 
And, following along, those vaulted spaces through, 
Under the billows, he saw with deep amaze 
The watery world, the seat of his mother's rule, 
And the ringing groves and many a cave-locked pool : 
And the great sway of the waves benumbed his brain ; 
For all the rivers of the wide world were there. 
Moving in their channels subterranean, — 
Phasis and Lycus, and the deep fountains where 
Enipus and father Tiber their rise take, 
And Anio still, and Hypanis that doth make 
Perpetual murmur upon his rocky bed, 



140 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book IV. 

And Mysian Caicus, and the bull-visaged Po, 

Having the two horns gilded upon his head, 

Than which no river of all the earth doth flow 

Through richer fields, or more impetuously 

Discharge his tribute into the purple sea. 

So, now, the wanderer being fully come 

Unto Gyrene's bower, did, entering in. 

Pass under the spar-hung ceilings of her home, 

And she the story of his wild weeping win ; 

The while the sisterhood in procession fair, 

For the laving of his hands, pure water bare 

And napless towels. But others yet, intent, 

The viands heap, and plenish the drained cup ; 

And, all with spices of Araby redolent, 

Sweetly the smoke of the altar fires goes up. 

Till the voice of the mother soundeth : ^^Lift we thus 

M^onian cups, and unto Oceanus 

Libation pour ! " Then made she orison 

To the lord of life in the sea ; and the sister maids, 

Whereof an hundred haunt the rivers alone, 

An hundred minister in the woodland shades ; 

Thrice then on the fire the liquid nectar shed ; 




Book IV. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 141 

Thrice leaped the blaze till the roof-tree shone o'er head, 
And, staying her soul on the omen, thus she said : — 



I OWN in the abysses of the Carpathian Sea 
A prophet of Neptune, steel-blue Proteus, bides. 
With a finny train and biped horses lie 
In a chariot over the plain of ocean glides. 
And visiteth even now Pallene, and 
The ports of his Macedonian fatherland. 
And we of the nymphs do hold him in deep awe ; 
So even doth hoary Nereus : for he knoweth 
All things which are and have been, and them which draw 
Hither out of the future he foreshoweth ; 
Neptune ordains it, — there where he doth keep 
Sea-calves and herds of monsters, under the deep. 
This Proteus, child, must thou in fetters bind 
Till he deliver the cause of all the woe 
Thou sufferest, and promise issue to thy mind. 
He giveth no oracles otherwise than so 
Compelled, nor softeneth he for any prayers. 
O'erpower him, therefore, and chain him unawares, 



142 THE GEORGICS OF YERGIL. Book IV. 

And circumvent and shatter his idle craft. 

Now I myself, when the fires of noon are hot, 

And the herbs of the field all faint for their dew-draught, 

And the herd for the shade, will show the secret spot 

Wherein the ancient many a time doth steal, 

Weary of the waters, and his form conceal ; 

For, while he lieth asleep, thou mayst draw near 

Unstayed. But when thou hast grappled him and bound. 

His manifold transformations will appear. 

All shapes of savagery mock thee and astound ; 

And now of a bristling boar he takes the form, 

And now of a tiger fell, or mailed worm. 

And now of a lioness with tawny mane ; 

Anon, with a sudden hissing, as of fire. 

He slips thy chains, and is lost in the wave again : 

Wherefore do thou, son, with implacable ire, 

The more he changeth, tighten thy bonds the more, 

Till he taketh again the shape that erst he wore 

When thou sawest the slumber steal his eyelids o'er. *' 




Book IV. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. . 143 

i saying, she an ambrosial balm did shed, 
And saturate all the body of her son. 
Till even the ringlets of his comely head 
Breathed perfume, and a subtle power did run 
His members through. J^ow there is a mountain-side 
Vast, excavate in a grotto, where the tide, 
Forced mightily inward by the wind, is cleft, 
And seeketh sinuous channels, far withdrawn. 
Herein full many a mariner, storm-bereft, 
Hath found safe harborage in the years agone ; 
And Proteus cherisheth here a lurking-place 
Behind a mighty rock. Through devious ways, 
Hither the Nymph conducts her child, and leaves 
In hiding, and from the outer sunshine turned. 
While a nebulous veil herself, hard by, receives. 
Lo now, in the firmament, fleet Sirius burned. 
The planet of thirsty Ind ; and the sun on high 
Had half devoured liis course, and the herbs were dry ; 
And under the fierce combustion of those rays. 
The very slime of the river-beds grew hot, 
And the waters vanished out of their hollow ways. 



144 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book IV. 

Then Proteus, even as his wont was ever, sought 

A refuge out of the billows in the caves. 

The humid folk of the universal waves 

Leaped round his going, scattering bitter dew, 

And seals lay stretched in slumber about the strand. 

The while, from a rocky throne, he did review 

And tell the number of all his ocean band. 

As a herdsman upon the hills, at even-fall, 

Leadeth his flock from pasture back to stall. 

While the bleating of tender lambs the ear doth whet 

Of the listening wolf. But, ready for mastery. 

Seized Aristaeus, that thing of eld, ere yet 

His weary limbs unto sleep composed he ; 

Falling upon him with a mighty cry. 

Clinching with manacles there where he did lie. 

And the monster, not oblivious in the least 

Of his old arts, miraculous feats essayed 

Of infinite transformation. Horrible beast 

And fire and a flowing stream, by turns, was made, 

Till, baffled of flight, and beaten in every guise, 

He came to himself, and spake in mortal wise : — 

** Under whose orders, thou most insolent youth. 



Book IV. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 145 

Invadest thou my dominions 1 What 's thy will ? '* 

But he : " Thou knowest, thou knowest full well, in sooth, 

O Proteus ! He who would cheat thee wasteth skill. 

Have done then, also, with all those wiles of thine ; 

For, verily, the lead I follow is divine. 

Because of my fallen fortunes come I here. 

Desiring an oracle.'* He spake no more. 

With a mighty spasm, then the soothsayer 

Did roll his burning orbs the invader o'er. 

Green glaring, and, while he ground his teeth with hate, 

There issued out of his lips the word of fate. 




j HOU art smit by the wrath of a god, and dost 
atone 

Great crimes. It is Orpheus in his misery 
Thee scourgeth now, for a wrong unwitting done 
Unto him. So may thy fates deliver thee. 
He is wild with sorrowing after his vanished bride, 
Who hasted unto her death, by the river-side, 
From thy pursuing, nor e'er discerned so 
In the tall grass at her feet the hydra fell. 

10 



146 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book IV. 

But her Dryad mates uplifted a cry of woe, 

Whose echoes high as the mountain peaks did swell, 

And the summits of Rhodope bewailed her sore, 

And the hills of Pangseum, and Ehesus' martial shore, 

And the river Hebrus, and the dwellers in Thrace, 

And Athenian Orithyia. But he was fain. 

By the ocean strand, in a solitary place. 

To soothe with the hollow lyre his heart in pain ; 

And ' Wo for thee, my beloved ! ' he sang alway, 

' For thee ' in the dawning, ' thee ' in the dying day. 

Thereafter did his footstfeps even invade 

The jaws of Tsenarus and the doors of Dis. 

Through the dark of the awesome grove his way he made. 

Till he came to the Manes' home, and saw, I wis, 

The king in his terror, and essayed to move. 

With prayers of a man, the hearts that know not love. 

Then, from the lowest deeps of Erebus, rose 

The shadowy folk, thrilled by his minstrelsy, — 

Tenuous, the far-off images of those 

Who here lost life. So myriad birds do fly. 

Driven of the rainy gale, the deepening night, 

To leafy cover down from a mountain height. 



Book IV. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 147 

The spirits of mothers and of men were there, 

And many a shape of high-souled hero dead, 

And young things laid on the bale, for the despair 

Of them who bore them — striplings and maids unwed, 

Prisoned mid the coarse reeds and murky mire. 

And sluggish oozings of the Cocytus dire ; 

And by the ninefold circle of Styx compelled. 

But him the secret corners of Tartarus 

And houses of death with deep amaze beheld ; 

And they of the braided tresses, tortuous 

With livid serpents, even the Eumenides ; 

Yea, the dog Cerberus, astonied as these. 

Held his three mouths agape ; and the wind impelling 

The wheel of Ixion, and the wheel did rest. 

He had wellnigh 'scaped the snares of yon dread dwelling : 

He had turned to go ; and, given unto his quest, 

Eurydice, by the will of Proserpine, 

Was following his feet to the upper air divine. 

When a sudden craze on that bold lover came : — 

Oh, surely, if Hades aught at all doth know 

Of pardon, there shall be pardon for the same ! 

But, reckless, conquered of his own heart, — ah, woe ! 



148 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book IV. 

On the very confines of the light stayed he, 

And looked back upon his Eurydice ! 

Undone his work now, and annulled the bonds 

Of the stern tyrant ; while an all-piercing shriek 

Is three times heard around the Avernian ponds. 

' Oh, what is this madness, Orpheus 1 ' 'gan she speak, 

' Why hast thou wrought this ruin for hapless me, 

Ay, and for thine own self? Listen,' said she, 

' The cruel Fates are calling me back again ; 

A drowsiness creepeth o'er my swimming eyes : 

I must say farewell ! Meseems that I am ta'en 

And carried along the black immensities, 

Outstretching these incapable palms of mine, 

Feeling after thee ; but, ah, no longer thine ! ' 

Turning even so, she vanished out of sight, 

As a vapor breaks and is lost in the viewless air. 

]^o longer, for all his frantic striving, might 

He clasp that shadow, and his full heart declare ; 

And never again will he be let to cross 

Of Orcus' janitor over the guardian fosse. 

What can he do now 1 Whither himself betake? 

Will all his wailing over his twice-lost love 



Book IV. THE GEORGICS OF YERGIL. 149 

Soften the Manes, or compassion wake 

In the gods of the under-world 1 Kay, she did move 

Gold o'er the waves e'en then in the Stygian hoat. 

Seven full months, under the sky-ward cliffs remote 

By the desert water of Strymon, men do say 

He wept his woe in the gelid caverns drear, 

And wrought it into so masterful a lay 

That the oaks and the softening tigers came to hear. 

So, mid the poplar foliage, Philomel 

The sorrowful tale of her lost young doth tell. 

Whom, featherless yet, the brutal husbandman 

Hath marked and torn from the parent nest. But she 

The self-same strophe of mourning doth again 

And yet again deliver distressfully ; 

Keeping her perch on the bough the livelong night, 

Filling all space with query ings infinite ! 

jS'o other love, no nuptials, any more 

Might sway the soul of Orpheus ; but he did move, 

Alone the Hyperborean glaciers o'er. 

Or yet, by the snow-bound banks of Tanais rove, 

Or wander the meadoAvs, widowed ne'er of frost, 

Ehipean, still bewailing the vanished ghost, 



150 THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. Book IV. 

And the mocking gifts of Pluto. At the end, 

The dames of the Cicones, in their fierce despite 

At his so deep devotion, him did rend 

Young limb from limb, in the midst of a sacred rite 

At the nightly orgies of Bacchus, and were fain 

To strew his parted members over the plain 

Then, when QEagrian Hebrus, rolling by, 

Did carry in his mid stream that marble head 

Dissevered from the neck, incessantly 

The stiffening tongue, and the isolate voice yet said : — 

* Eurydice ! Ah, poor Eurydice ! ' 

So with escaping soul entreated he, 

And the shores replied, far off, ' Eurydice ! ' " 



EOTEUS thus far , — then with a mighty bound 
Eetreated into the deep, and, wheresoe'er 
He goes, the foaming waters are whirled around 
Under the eddy. But Aristaeus' fear 
Was calmed of Cyrene, who fled not so, 
But straightway unto her son did counsel show. 




Book IV. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 151 




jiOW iriayst thou ease thy spirit of anxious care, 
My child, for here was the source of every 
ill. 
That wretched fate of the bees did they prepare, 
The nymphs who danced with her on the wooded hill. 
Do thou then, seeking for peace by prayer and gift, 
Unto the kind wood-nymphs thine offerings lift ; 
For pardon is won of them when vows are paid. 
And quieted soon their ire. Yet listen, son, 
While the manner of this thy sacrifice is made 
Plain, and the ritual of thine orison. 
Four bulls of excellent comeliness, who now 
Do peacefully graze on green Lycaeus' brow, 
Select thou first, and, after, as many more 
Of heifers yet by the yoke inviolate. 
Then set thou up for thy victims altars four 
At the shrines of the goddesses, high and consecrate. 
And let the sacred blood from the throat, and bear 
The bodies to a lone grove, and leave them there. 
Then, when her ninth arising upon the skies 
Aurora showeth, do thou to Orpheus proffer 




152 THE GEORGICS OF YERGIL. Book IY. 

The poppies of Lethe for a sacrifice, 

And also a sheep with ebon fleeces offer, 

And, once more having appeased with heifer slain 

Eurydice, revisit the grove again." 



I E came, at his mother's word, without delay 
To the shrines, and the ordered altars did evoke. 
Four bulls of excellent comeliness did slay. 
Four heifers, all inviolate by the yoke. 
Then, when Aurora her ninth arising made, 
The appointed sacrifice to Orpheus paid. 
And came to the grove, and a wordless wonder spied. 
For the molten viscera were all alive w^ith bees : 
They buzzed in the belly, strove in the riven side. 
Then rose and floated away toward the topmost trees. 
And their following long made all the aether dim, 
Till they hung like clustered fruit from the swaying limb. 



Book IV. THE GEORGICS OF VERGIL. 153 




HUS did I sing of the care of field and flock 
And all the trees of the forest, while, afar, 
Euphrates deep was feeling the thunder-shock 
Of bolts the heroic Caesar launched in war, 
And he victorious, winning his way to heaven 
By righteous laws, unto willing peoples given. 
But I, Vergilius, all that while possest 
And nourished of my sweet Parthenope, 
Did put forth blossoms of an inglorious rest, 
Trifling with pastoral strains. For I am he 
Who, daring and young, the song of thee essayed, 
Tityrus, under the beech-tree^s breadth of shade ! 



Cambridge : Electrotyped and Printed by John Wilson 6c Son. 



